The Nale Family Page
This page is designed to be a means of gathering and circulating information about the Nale family. It is hoped that those of you who wander into this site will learn more about the family, its origins and its history here in this country and make your own contributions to the story of the Nales. The Internet provides us with a fabulous tool to help us do this. There is an ever-growing number of genealogical sites, programs and family pages available and as more and more people gain access to the WWW the opportunities for finding the information that we seek will increase.
We are a relatively small family. There are about 1,500 persons in the US who bear the Nale surname. There are also over 700 Nales in Italy and over 100 in France. In the US this comes to about one Nale in every 177,000 people. Not exactly up there with the Smiths or Joneses, but we are here and we can get to know each other and where we came from.
While Nales are scattered all over the US, Pennsylvania has the most, with 69 listings, mostly concentrated in Mifflin and Blair Counties. California has 41; Tennessee, 40; Illinois & Indiana, 37 each; Texas, 30 and Florida, 23.
We cannot put all that we know already on this site. It is hoped that other Nales will contact us by email. On request, we will send you a list of all that we have - family lines, photos, military records, etc. We will share these with you and ask that you share whatever information you have with us.
But before we continue we have to face...
The Nale, N-a-l-e Curse
All Nales know that it is not enough to give your name - you also have to spell it, and still no one believes us. A typical conversation goes like this: Your Name? Nale, N-a-l-e. What? Nale, N-a-l-e. Hmphh, well, Mr Hale, what can we do for you? Nale is one of the nicest four-letter words I know - it is crisp, concise, loyal, trustworthy, reverent and a lot of other nice stuff. However, I suspect that many think that we are really Nails who can't spell our own name.
But then it has not been all that long ago that the vast majority of people couldn't spell their own name - or anything else for that matter. Universal literacy is fairly recent. And, what with different national origins, languages, dialects, etc. the Nale name has turned up with many different spellings and pronunciations. See the note on Martin NALL/NAWEL/NALE/NAWL on the Early Nales page for an example.
We have learned thatwhile some Nales have an English background, others can trace the name to the German Nagel.. We know of one family that changed its name from the Polish Gwodzdz to Nale because no one could promounce or spell Gwodzdz - which is a little odd since no one can spell Nale either.
Many Nales have had their names changed by others - in the census returns, for example. My great-grandfather's name appears as Nail in the 1850 &1860 censuses, while I am certain that the reference is to a Nale. Some Nales have given up and changed the spelling. I know of one family that changed to Neal - and a Nail that changed to Nale. So we have a tough time going back through the records and tracing the line. But we prevail - after a while those who come to know us admit that we can spell after all.
Following are links to the other pages.
Origin & Coat of Arms - The A.W. Nale Family - Early Nales
For much more information on this family, go to http://www.nale.org |
Visitors since December 9, 2000