This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/BKI.2ACIB/1.7.2.1 Message Board Post: The Cavill line originated in Howden, East Yorkshire; the name originally being "Cafeld" - meaning "Jackdaw field". The Normans changed the "feld"(old English for "field') to "ville"(the French for "place"); which changed the meaning to "Jackdaw place" - same thing, different language, that's all. Cavil( place name) is in the Domesday Book for East Yorkshire. Howden is/was the site of Cavil(l) Hall(razed to the ground in the 1800's) which was like a small scale castle with a moat; and the rebuilt Caville Hall(built over the filled-in moat) which was demolished in the late 1950's to the early 1960's, due to subsidence. To-day, Cavill(e) Hall Farm is owned and leased by the Norwich Union Insurance Company(since circa 1946) and the terraced row of farm workers' cottages are called "Cavill Cottages" - about four in all, from memory. Cavell may have had Norman origins, but it started in Cornwall; the coat-of-arms being about 200 years younger that the Cavill coat-of-arms. Neither family has a direct, right-of-claim descendant alive to-day; and has not for several hundred years. Cavell is more common than Cavill in the south & south-west England. Since none of us can claim direct line descent from the original surnamed Cavell or Cavill family, I am of the strong opinion that we have all inherited a phonetic-cum-better known or seen spelling of Cavill or Cavell; and that in fact, the two families are now one and the same family. My own line is/was Cavill; but, I have Cavell and many other variations of the spelling in my line - back to phonetics etc. [email protected]