Vidal
A surname most often linked to the old personal name Vitalis, meaning “life” or “vital,” especially in French and Spanish families.
The #1,933 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 16,531 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Vidal is generally understood as a surname formed from the medieval personal name Vidal, which goes back to Latin Vitalis. That Latin name is built on vita, meaning “life,” so the basic sense is “vital” or “full of life.” In some traditions it is treated as a hereditary surname taken from an ancestor named Vidal; in others it reflects the spread of the Christian name Vitalis through Romance-speaking Europe.
History
The name is well attested in southern France and northeastern Spain, and 19th-century writers especially connected it with French Protestant families who moved after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Historical notes also place bearers in Spanish America, and one source suggests the Spanish branch may be older or at least more prominent than the French one in some lines. The surname also appears in English records, sometimes as an imported continental name and sometimes through local development from the same root.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One early source specifically links Vidal with the bishop O. E. Vidal of Sierra Leone and says the family arms pointed to a Spanish, not a French, origin.
From the historical record
“VICTOR. The personal name. VIDAL. French Protestant refugees, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1G85. The parent stock were, not many years since, resident at Montauban. The family seem to have ranged from the South of France to the North of Spain, and there are many of the name in Spanish America. The…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom