655 Global WETHERILL Family Members

WETHERILL Family History

This long-established name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the place called Wetheral near Carlisle in Cumberland. The placename is recorded as "Wetherhala", circa 1100, in the "Register of the Priory of Wetherhal", and appears as "Wederhala" in the 1186 Cumberland Pipe Rolls; the name means "the haugh where wethers were kept", derived from the Olde English pre 7th Century "wether", wether (castrated) ram, with "halh", nook, hollow, recess. In Northern England this latter element often has the specialized meaning of a "haugh", a piece of flat alluvial land by the side of a river, originally one deposited in a bend.