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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • French : metonymic occupational name for a torchbearer, from Old French faille ‘torch’ (Late Latin facilla).
  • French : metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of a kind of silk material known in Old French as faille (Middle High German pfelle, from Latin palliolum, a type of light garment).
  • French : nickname for an inept or luckless individual, from Old French faille ‘fault’, ‘failing’, ‘mistake’.
  • French : variant spelling of Faile.

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