Explore the Family Name Catchpole

The meaning of Catchpole

English (mainly East Anglia): from Middle English (Anglo-Norman French) cachepol, ‘one who collects debts, a sheriff’s officer or sergeant, a petty bailiff’. It is a northern French form of Old French chacepol ‘tax gatherer’ from Old French chacier, cacher ‘to chase, catch, seize’ + Old French pol ‘fowl, cock’ or pole ‘hen, chicken, pullet’. It was common practice in the middle ages for poultry to be taken as tax or rental payment, especially from poorer folk, but this etymological sense of the French word is largely irrelevant to the activities of the English catchpoles, whose job was to arrest debtors who had been fined for offences against local byelaws.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.