Family name origins & meanings
- Polish (Kapłon) : nickname from kapłon ‘capon’.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : variant spelling of Kaplan.
- Hungarian : habitational name from a place so named in Nógrád county in northern Hungary or from Kaplony in former Szatmár county. Both places were named with Turkic kaplon ‘tiger’, probably indicating that these villages were established by a clan of Kalizes, Uzes, Pechenegs, Cumanians, or some other extinct Turkic people whose totemic animal was the tiger.