Deville
A surname usually taken from French place-names meaning “of the town” or “from the village,” though some medieval cases may reflect other origins.
The #8,496 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 79,635 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Deville is most often explained as a French locational surname built from de, meaning “of” or “from,” plus ville, which in older French could mean a town, settlement, or rural estate. So the name would originally mark someone as coming from a place called Ville or “the town.” Some older sources also note medieval spellings and related forms that point to Norman-French place-name origins, especially in England after the Norman period.
History
The name appears in medieval records in several spellings, including forms such as Deyville and Devile, showing that it was established early in Norman and Anglo-Norman usage. Later writers also observed that some examples may overlap with other surnames or place-name forms, so not every medieval Deville necessarily came from the same source. In France, the surname seems to have remained tied to local habitation names, while in English records it could be absorbed into a wider cluster of Norman surnames.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One 20th-century source notes that medieval records include forms like le Diable, showing that not every Deville-type spelling was straightforwardly a place-name surname.
From the historical record
“was originally the liorn of a bull, anciently in some dialects so called. Sir John Maun- deville tells of " griffouncs" with talons a3 large as " homes of grete oxen, or of bugles, or of kyzn !") A player on tl:e bugle-horn. BUIST. Thick and gross. "He is a bnlst of a fellow — he is a gross man."”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom