Recorded in a wide range of spellings including Habble, Habel, Hables, Habelle, Hayball, Hebel, Heball, Heyball, and others and all quite rare, this is almost certainly an English surname and locational. It does not seem to be recorded in any of the spellings in the recognized dictionaries of surnames. This would suggest that either it is version of an existing surname such as Hebble, or it is from a now "lost" medieval village of which the surviving surname is the only recognizable reminder.Some three thousand surnames of the British Isles are proven to come from lost places, but whether this is one is open to argument. The earliest known published recordings appear to be those in the surviving church registers of the city of London from about the early Stuart period. The first example would seem to be Peter Haball, whose son, the exotically named or at least spelt Jurram, was christened at the church of St Katherines by the Tower (of London) on April 18th 1613. It is just possible that Haball could be like Hablot a diminutive of the popular first name and surname Herbert, but is is much more likely to be a form of Hebble, a former village in West Yorkshire meaning "plank bridge." Although we canot be absolutely certain this "first" recording there seems to have developed in London a whole series of spellings including Heyball in 1620, Heball in 1628, Habelle in 1712 and Hayball in 1788.

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