Family name origins & meanings
- French and German : occupational name from Old French bedel, a word with many senses in medieval Europe, among them ‘beadle’ ‘bailiff’, ‘janitor’, and ‘soldier’ (from Late Latin pedellus, bedellus ‘messenger’, ‘servant’). It is cognate with English Beadle.
- A Bedel from Toulouse, with the secondary surname St. George, was recorded in Canada in 1759.