The Coghiel Family
A rare name with deep roots — tracing the origin of Coghiel, its journey from the Yorkshire dales to the Caribbean, and the people who carry it today.
Name Origins
The etymology of Coghiel — from a Yorkshire spring to a family of spelling variants.
Historical Context
A short history through the centuries, from medieval England to Scotland and the Americas.
Latin American Diaspora
Our branches across the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the demographic data behind them.
Where does the name Coghiel come from?
Coghiel is a rare variant of the English surname Coghill. Like many surnames, it began as a way to describe where someone lived — and its parts reach back to the languages spoken in northern England a thousand years ago.
A place in Yorkshire
The most widely accepted origin is habitational: from Cogill in Aysgarth, North Yorkshire. The name blends Old English cot ("cottage") with Old Norse kelda ("spring") — the cottage by the spring.
A Norse reading
An older tradition reads it from the Old Norse personal name Koggi — a small boat — joined to Old English hyll ("hill"): the hill of the small boat, a nod to the Viking settlement of the Danelaw.
A family of variants
Over the centuries the spelling drifted: Coghill, Cogbill, Cohill, Cogdill, Cowgill and the rarer Coghiel. The "ie" form is distinctive to a small branch of the family — our branch.
A short history of the name
From a Yorkshire hamlet to Scotland, the Americas and the Caribbean — the name travelled with the people who bore it.
Medieval England
The name is first recorded in Yorkshire, where families took their surname from the lands around Cogill and Cockhill in the North and West Ridings. Surnames were becoming hereditary in this period, fixing the family name in the record.
Into Scotland
By the early modern period a notable Coghill presence appears in Scotland — particularly in the Borders and the east coast. Today FamilySearch lists over 1,200 Coghills in its Scottish family tree, one of the strongest concentrations anywhere.
Across the seas
From the 18th century onward, Coghills emigrated to the United States, Australia and the Caribbean — carried by trade, military service and the great movements of the British Empire. Passenger lists and immigration records trace these journeys port by port.
The Caribbean branch
The spelling Coghiel is uncommon — Ancestry holds just 221 records for it — and it marks a particular branch of the family whose story crosses the Atlantic.
A name between two worlds
For the African Caribbean diaspora, a surname is often the only thread that survived the crossing — a name carried from one continent to another, sometimes changed in the telling. The Coghiel spelling is part of that story: a family that moved between the Caribbean and Britain, holding onto a name even as its shape shifted.
The Anthony & Louise Coghiel Foundation carries that name forward — preserving the memory of where it came from and the generations who bore it.
221
Coghiel records
174
Birth, marriage & death
30
Immigration records
Across the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and beyond
The Coghiel name did not stop in the English-speaking Caribbean. Like many African Caribbean families, branches moved onward into Latin America — part of the great Afro-Antillean migration that reshaped the basin in the early twentieth century.
Between the 1880s and 1930s, hundreds of thousands of English-speaking Caribbean people crossed into the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Central America in search of work. They built the Panama Canal, laid the railways and worked the banana plantations of Costa Rica and Honduras, and cut cane in the sugar fields of Cuba. They carried their English surnames — and their family names — with them.
For the Coghiel family, this movement meant some branches put down roots in Latin America: marrying into Spanish-speaking families, raising children bilingually, and seeing the surname take on new spellings and accents in Spanish-language records. These descendants are part of the same family — connected by a name that travelled from a Yorkshire spring to the ports of Colón, Limón and Havana.
We are still mapping this branch. If your Coghiel roots run through Latin America, add your story to the family tree.
Panama
Canal Zone labourers, 1904–1914. Many West Indian families settled in Colón and Panama City.
Costa Rica
United Fruit banana plantations around Limón — an English-speaking Caribbean enclave on the Atlantic coast.
Cuba
Sugar estates in Oriente province drew thousands of Antillean workers in the early 1900s.
Honduras & Nicaragua
Banana enclaves on the Caribbean coast, where English-Creole communities formed.
Documents and images from our Latin American branches
Archival documents and historical photographs tracing the Coghiel family's Afro-Antillean journey across Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba and the wider Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
No Latin American items yet
Upload photos or scanned documents whose title, description or location mentions Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba, Honduras, Limón, Havana or the Afro-Antillean diaspora to populate this gallery.
Upload to the galleryThe family's path across the world
Each line traces a life — from birthplace to final resting place, with the journeys in between. Drawn from the birth and death locations recorded on each family member.
Photos, documents & Latin American roots
A visual archive of the Coghiel family — historical photographs, scanned records and images tracing our branches into Latin America. Items are sorted into categories from their captions and locations.
No photos in the archive yet
Upload historical photos, scanned documents and images of our Latin American branches to bring this gallery to life.
Upload to the galleryShare your own Coghiel story
Help grow the archive. Submit a family memory or photograph for review by our admins.
Add your story to the Coghiel archive
Community members can share family stories, memories and photographs for inclusion in this heritage page.
Where the name lives today
The wider Coghill family is most strongly represented in the United States, with significant populations in Scotland and England. The Coghiel variant remains rare — concentrated in a small number of family lines.
1,820
United States
FamilySearch family tree
1,201
Scotland
FamilySearch family tree
258
England
FamilySearch family tree
Coghill — records by country
FamilySearch family tree
Coghiel — record breakdown
Ancestry collections (221 total)
Figures reflect the broader Coghill surname on FamilySearch; the Coghiel spelling is a much smaller subset, recorded mainly in US collections on Ancestry.
Follow the paper trail
The family's story is scattered across census returns, passenger lists and parish registers. The full tree — with sources — is kept on Ancestry.
Help us fill in the gaps
Surname research is a living project. If you have stories, records or photographs connected to the Coghiel name, add them to the family tree and help the next generation find their roots.
Add to the family tree