indicate the level to which a name has been verified.
Gender Feminine
Meaning & History
Used by Edgar Allan Poe for the title character of his Gothic short story Morella (1835), in which case he may have invented it by adding a diminutive suffix to Latin mors "death". Alternatively, it may be derived from the name of the ancient Spanish city, the Italian name for the poisonous weed black nightshade (species Solanum nigrum), or from the Italian surname Morello, all of them ultimately deriving from Greek μαῦρος (mauros) meaning "black". This name was also used as a rare medieval Scottish variant of Muriel.