NIGELLUS.  A Latinized form of Old Norse Njáll (q.v.), meaning "champion."

    The Northmen apparently took their Njal to France with them, and it there was called Nesle or Nêle.  Chroniclers Latinized it as Nigellus, supposing it to mean black; and in Domesday book, twelve landholders called Nigellus appear, both before and after the Conquest, so that they may be supposed to be Danish Niels, left undisturbed in their possessions... The diminutive of Roman Niger (Nigellus) seems to have been adopted in France, by the Normans, as a translation of the Nial which they had brought from Norway, after having learned it of the Gael, in whose tongue it means the noble... (Ibid., Yonge, 1884)