Last name origins & meanings:
- Scottish or Irish: reduced form of McFall.
- English: topographic name for someone who lived by a waterfall, declivity, or
forest clearing, Middle English fall (from Old English
(ge)fall ‘a felling of trees’, Old Norse fall ‘forest
clearing’).
- German: topographic name from Middle High
German val ‘fall (of trees)’; in some cases ‘waterfall’ or
‘landslide’, or a habitational name from a minor place named with this
word, or in Tyrol from Ladine val ‘valley’.
- African: unexplained.
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