Family name origins & meanings
- English (Norfolk) : nickname from a reduced form of Middle English apostel ‘apostle’ (Old English apostol, via Latin from Greek apostolos ‘messenger’, ‘delegate’, from apostellein ‘to dispatch’). As a nickname, this may have been used for someone who had played the part of one of the twelve apostles in a play or pageant. However, the word was also used as a personal name. Compare Postlethwait.