Sale Family History

English: habitational name from Sale (Cheshire) or from any of several minor places or topographic features named from Middle English sale salle ‘sallow willow’ (Old English s(e)alh). See also Seal with which this name may often have interchanged. The gentry family that took its name from Sale in Cheshire became prominent landowners on the Isle of Man (see Sayle).

English: from Middle English sal(e) ‘hall’ (Old English sæl Old French sale Old Norse salr) translated by medieval clerks as Latin aula. The surname may be topographic for someone who lived or worked in a hall or occupational for someone who worked at a hall as a servant. This was the name of an Anglo-Norman family who had settled in County Tipperary, Ireland, by the 13th century.

The name was Gaelicized as de Sál hence the Anglicized form Saul which has been widely adopted in Ireland. Croatian (Šale): probably from a pet form of the personal name Šanto, a Croatized form of Italian Santo.

Slovenian (Šale): from a short form of the old personal name Šalamon (see Salamon) or a nickname from šaliti se ‘to joke, to jest’. Italian: habitational name from any of the places called Sale (Piedmont).

Italian (Sardinia): metonymic occupational name from sale ‘salt’ for a producer or seller. French (Salé): variant of Sallé ‘salty, salted’ (see Salle).