For your information 'Csepel' is a very old Hungarian name and a huge island in the Danube river under Budapest bears the same name for over a thousand years. According to old legend the island was named after a favourite stable boy (or horse hand) of Arpad, the chief (or khan) of the Hungarian tribes that came to the Carpathian Basin (present day Hungary) around 900 a.d. The first consonant is invariably pronounced as 'ch' in 'chair'.
Current Hungarian versions of the name are:
Csepel, Csepeli, Csepely, Cepeli, Czepeli.
The general meaning of the name is 'someone, who lived or came from the island of Csepel'. There is no Italian name that could bear any common ancestry to Cepeli, Cepela, Cepella or Cepelli, as the closest match would be Cipolla (onion) and these vowels do not vary that easily. (I'm a linguist.....)
a remark to Gejza Cepela: Gejza or Geza was also the son of Arpad for that matter..... the area from where your ancestors arrived to the New World was ethnic Hungarian (and still is to some degree) Consider yourself very much Hungarian....:-)
If you are interested in any more Hungarian relations, please write to my private address
tropicale@mailbox.hu, as I just came across this forum while searching for my own name on the net.
Gejza