This rare and interesting name has two distinct origins, each with its own derivation. Firstly, the surname may be of early medieval English origin, derived from the Middle English phrase "atten angle", used as a topographical name for someone who lived at an odd corner of land, from the Old French "angle", corner, angle. The phrase was misdivided to give the surnames Nangle, Neagle, Nagle, Nagel, and Negal; other, similar formations from misdivision are Nash, from "atten ash", and Noak(es), from "atten oke(s)". In Ireland the name was introduced by the Normans during the 12th Century in the forms "de Nogla, de Angulos". Gilbert de Angulo was a Norman baron who settled in Ireland in the 12th Century, and members of the family who bore the Anglicized names Nagle or Neagle held estates in County Cork and Connacht. The second possible origin of the name is from an Old Germanic occupational surname for a maker of nails, from the Old German "nagel", nail. Early recordings in German Church Registers include the christenings of Daniel and Anne, children of Isaac Negal, in 1596 and 1599 respectively, at Annweiler, Pfalz, Bayern, Germany. In Ireland, examples include the marriage of John Nagle and Mary Erwin in Cork City in 1733, and the birth of Mary, daughter of Richard and Mary Negal, at Kilmeaden, County Waterford, in 1865. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Berthold Nagel, which was dated 1277, in "Medieval Court Records of Brixen", during the reign of Rudolf 1, Duke of Austria, 1276 - 1282. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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