The surname of AVENALL was a baptismal name 'the son of Avenel'. The name was brought into England in the wake of the Norman Conquest from a small spot in France called Avenelles in the department of Eure. There are many instance of the name recorded in the Hundred Rolls of 1273, mainly documented in the Cambridge area. Early records of the name mention John Avenel, 1273 County Cambridge. Elena Avenel, County Oxford, 1273. William Averill of Yorkshire, was listed in the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379. Richard Treat married Mary Averill in London in the year 1626. Baptised. Ann Averill, St. James's, Clerkenwell, London in the year 1664. Many factors contributed to the establishment of a surname system. For generations after the Norman Conquest of 1066 a very few dynasts and magnates passed on hereditary surnames, but the main of the population, with a wide choice of first-names out of Celtic, Old English, Norman and Latin, avoided ambiguity without the need for a second name. As society became more stabilized, there was property to leave in wills, the towns and villages grew and the labels that had served to distinguish a handful of folk in a friendly village were not adequate for a teeming slum where perhaps most of the householders were engaged in the same monotonous trade, so not even their occupations could distinguish them, and some first names were gaining a tiresome popularity, especially Thomas after 1170. The hereditary principle in surnames gained currency first in the South, and the poorer folk were slower to apply it. By the 14th century however, most of the population had acquired a second name. The name was taken early to Scotland, where the first of the name on record appears to be Robertus Avenel, who witnessed charters in the reigns of David I and William the Lion. He received from David I grants of Upper and Lower Eskdale, and was a generous benefactor to the Abbey of Melrose, bestowing on the monks of that house a large portion of his lands in Upper Eskdale. Some time after 1175, he became a humble monk in that house, and died there in 1185. For some eighty years the family was prominent in the history of Scotland. It ended in the direct line in Roger Avenel who died in 1243, and his daughter and heiress married Henry de Graham of Abercorn, into whose hands the estate passed.

The name is also spelt AVERELL and AVERILL.