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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Italian : from palla ‘ball’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cannon balls or a nickname for a player of ball games or someone with a rotund figure.
  • Catalan : habitational name from any of several places of this name in Catalonia.
  • Catalan and Galician : also probably a derivative of palla ‘straw’.
  • Hungarian : from the personal name Pál (see Pal).
  • Indian (Gujarat) : Muslim name of unknown meaning.
  • Indian (Panjab) : Sikh name, probably from Panjabi pəllā ‘edge of a garment’, ‘support’.

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