Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch : habitational name for someone from a place or house called Hel or Ter Helle, from Middle Dutch helle ‘depression’, ‘low-lying place’.
- Italian : of uncertain derivation. It could be a topographic name from Old Italian venella ‘alley’. Alternatively, it could be from a short form of the personal name Giovanello (or the feminine form Giovanella) or from a derivative of Vano.