Family name origins & meanings
- French : nickname for someone with red hair or for a cunning person, from Old French goupil ‘fox’, Late Latin vulpiculus, a diminutive of classical Latin vulpes, a distant cognate of Wolf. This was replaced as a vocabulary word during the Middle Ages by renard, originally a personal name. Compare Reynard, the name borne by the fox in the popular beast tales.
- René Goupil, born in Angers, France, on May 13, 1608, arrived as a Jesuit priest in Canada in 1640, and was killed by the Iroquois in what is now NY in 1642. He was canonized on June 29, 1930. Another bearer of this name, from Normandy, was married in Quebec city in 1650.