Trucilla | Anthroponymy | Forum

I've never come across it myself, and the books I've consulted (so far) don't have it either. This isn't of course to say it isn't an old pagan name, just that, whatever its origin, it seems a rare name!

One thought was that it might potentially be a variant of the name Drusilla. Phonetically, the main distinction between 'd' and 't' is that one is voiced and the other voiceless (cf. s/z, p/b). The authors of the Oxford Dictionary of First Names (Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges) have said that the name Zara is probably a respelling of Sara, and that Tyson contains a metronymic from the mediaeval female name Dye (from Dionysia), so a voiceless/voiced shift might be involved here.

Trucilla also seems to be used as a surname; Ancestry has got a couple of relevant census records from mid-1800s New York. Is there any possibility that the name may have been given to your mother and grandmother as a transferred surname? As far as the origin of the surname itself, I have no idea at present!

This is all pure conjecture of course; hopefully someone else has some thoughts too.