The Scottish surname Maul, also spelled Maule, is of metronymic origin being derived from from Mall, a medieval pet form of the female personal name Mary. The name is first recorded in Yorkshire in the 13th Century. In the early 18th. century one branch of the Scottish Maules of Panmure had been established in the Greenwich area of London. By the mid-18th. century another family of Maules had moved from Berwickshire into Northumberland. The first reference to the name in the New World is in New England where Thomas Maul settled in 1617. Immigration records show the arrival of John Maul in Virginia in 1705.