Melwall

Recorded as Mulhall, Mallall, Malwal, Melwall, Milill, and possibly Millhill and Millwall, this is an English surname and locational. As can be seen by the apparent variations in possible spellings, it is of confused and perhaps unproven origins. Being locational it definately comes from a place, but we have not been to identify any such place in any of the first five spellings as given by the International Genealogical Index. As a result then logically it must originate either from one of the known three thousand "lost" medieval villages of the British Isles or more likely from either the London suburban places of Millwall or Millhill. Neither of these districts and former villages figure in the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, perhaps because there are over two hundred such places commencing Mil or Mill in the gazetters of the British Isles. All have the same meaning of a mill, which could have been originally a watermill or a windmill, with various suffix usually indicating where the mill was situated. Mill Hill in Middlesex was and is on a hill, but does not seem to have produced surnames, whilst Millwall was by the original Roman walls of the city of London. Recordings include John Millwall or Millwell at St Katherines by the Tower (of London) on December 27th 1679, Nicholas Mulhall who married Sarah Garrett at St Pauls Covent Garden, on May 27th 1763, and Henry Mallall, whose daughter Maria was christened at the Roman Catholic church, Lincolns Inn Fields, on March 5th 1769.