Caldwell Family History

English, Scottish, and Northern Irish: habitational name from any of several places in England and Scotland variously spelled that are named with Old English ceald ‘cold’ + well(a) ‘spring, stream’. Caldwell in North Yorkshire is one major source of the surname; Caldwell in Renfrewshire in Scotland is another. Possibly also from Caldwell (Warwickshire), Caldwall (Worcestershire), Cauldwell (Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire), Caudle Green (Gloucestershire), Caudle Ditch or Cawdle Fen (Cambridgeshire), Chadwell (Essex, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Wiltshire), Chardwell (Essex), or Chardle Ditch (Cambridgeshire, early recorded as Kadewelle).

Irish: when not the English surname, this is an Anglicized form of Ó Fuarghuis or Ó hUarghusa ‘descendant of (F)uarghus’, a personal name whose literal sense ‘cold’ + ‘choice’ was reinterpreted as coming from fuaruisce ‘cold water’.