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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : from Middle High German rigel ‘bar’, ‘crossbeam’, ‘mountain incline’, hence a topographic name or a habitational name from any of numerous places named with this word in Baden, Brandenburg, and Silesia; in some instances it may have been a metonymic occupational name for a maker of crossbars, locks, etc.

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