Family name origins & meanings
- French (Normandy and Picardy) and Dutch : variant spelling of Capel.
- Dutch and Belgian : occupational name for someone who worked in a chapel, from Middle Dutch kapel ‘chapel’, ‘church’. In some instances this may be a shortened form of van de Capelle, a topographic name for someone who lived by a chapel, or van Capelle, a habitational name for someone from any of various places named with this word, such as Kapelle-op-de-Bos or Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, both in the Belgian province of Brabant.