Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name for someone who lived by a patch of fallow land, Middle English falwe (Old English f(e)alg). This word was used to denote both land left uncultivated for a time to recover its fertility and land recently brought into cultivation.
- The name is also borne by Ashkenazic Jews, as an Americanized form of one or more like-sounding Jewish surnames.