Channell
A surname from a water channel or artificial watercourse, essentially the older form of “channel.”
The #9,765 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 93,052 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Channell is an English surname formed from the word for a channel, especially an artificial watercourse, ditch, or narrow waterway. The word ultimately comes through Anglo-French/Old French from Latin canalis, meaning a trough, pipe, or water conduit. As a surname, it likely began as a topographic name for someone who lived by such a feature or near a place known by that word.
History
19th- and early-20th-century surname writers treated Channell as one of several names derived from artificial watercourses. In practice it may have overlapped with spelling variants of Channel, and the modern form survived in relatively small numbers in English-speaking countries. The name is not especially common today, but it fits the broader English pattern of surnames taken from local landscape features.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Early surname collections sometimes grouped Channell with names for watery landscape features alongside Sand, Shore, and Beach.
From the historical record
“FORD, Woodford, Woolford ; Fordin, Seaward, Se- ward, Surges (L. 673, f 157), Wade, Wadey, Wady, Drown, Drowne, Eddy, Channel and Channell, Sands, Sandy, Sand, Sanborn (i.e., "sand born"), Sandborne, Seawall (1675), Bar, Whorf, Beach, Pebbles, Shore (L. 63, f. 237), Shores, Shorey,”
— Suffolk Surnames (3rd ed.)