Mapple History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms

The surname Mapple was first found in Kirkcudbrightshire (Gaelic: Siorrachd Chille Chuithbheirt), part of the present day Council Area of Dumfries and Galloway, former county in Southwestern Scotland, where they held a family seat from early times and their first records appeared on the early census rolls taken by the early Kings of Britain to determine the rate of taxation of their subjects.

Much farther to the south in Cornwall, England we found this interesting entry as to the parish of Mabe in Cornwall:

"This parish, which is neither large nor populous, is in the deanery and east division of the hundred of Kirrier. It is situated about two miles and a half nearly north-west from Penryn, and contains but little to recommend it to particular notice. On the origin of its name many doubts have been entertained. As a distinct parish its antiquity cannot be compared to that of many other parishes; since it was formerly appropriated to the rich college of Glaseney, at Penryn, and in conjunction with Milor, it forms at present only a consolidated vicarage. In some old records this parish bears the name of Lavabe or Lavapper, and at other times Lan-Mabe, which implies the church of Mabe.' 1

Father Mapple is a fictional character in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851); eponym of Mapple Glacier, in the Aristotle Mountains of Antarctica.