Family name origins & meanings
- English (Cheshire) : perhaps a habitational name from Cromwell in Nottinghamshire or Cromwell Bottom in West Yorkshire, both named from Old English crumb ‘crooked’ + wella ‘stream’, ‘spring’. The latter is recorded as Crumbel (1251) and Crumble (1566).
- Probably an altered spelling of German Krumpel or Krümpel, a nickname for someone with a deformity, from Middle High German krum(p) ‘deformed’, ‘crooked’; skeletal deformities were common in the Middle Ages, often as a result of rickets.