(German) Descendant of Dago, a pet form of names beginning with Tag (the day), as Dagobald, Dagwart and Dagomar.

The widespread occurrence of Daigle households in southern Louisiana reflects a long and complex history of the surname in the state. Available records point to one Étienne Daigle dit Malborough, a Canadian from Quebec, as the first of the clan to settle in Louisiana.

As early as 1724, Étienne and wife Suzanne Despereau had obtained land on the west bank of the Mississippi a few miles upstream from New Orleans.

Later they settled in St. Charles Parish, where three generations of their descendants lived as planters until the end of the eighteenth century.

Étienne III, grandson of the progenitor, was the better known of the Daigle family m St Charles, he and his wife Marianne Tayon rearing four sons (Étienne IV, Joseph, Alexandre, and Eugène) and four daughters.

After the death of Étienne III in 1797, his widow sold the family estate along the Mississippi River and ca. 1803 moved to the Opelousas area, when; her sons began the large branch of the Daigles of southwest Louisiana.

Étienne IV (m. 1803 Marie Doucet) and Joseph (m. 1803 Pélagie Doucet) acquired land along the west bank of Bayou Plaquemine Brulée near present Church Point in what is now Acadia Parish, whereas Alexandre (m. 1818 Eloise Thibodaux) apparently settled farther north in St. Landry Parish;7 Eugène, who died in 1817 at 26, had no offspring.

For nearly a century the Church Point district remained the center of the Daigle family in southwest Louisiana, although before the Civil War some members had moved to the Teche near Breaux Bridge and to Lafayette.

Attracted by possibilities in large-scale rice farming, several Church Point Daigles began to migrate to areas around Iota, Crowley, and Jennings in the 1880s and early 1890. During the present century movement of their descendants has continued into Calcasieu Parish and southeastern Texas.

Most of the Daigle families that now live in southeastern Louisiana probably stem from Acadian exiles of that name who arrived from France in 1785. In that year eleven Daigle families, all Acadian refugees, disembarked in New Orleans. Of these, seven were sent to establish homes along the Mississippi between Manchac and Baton Rouge, and at least three were settled along the Lafourche.

Among the Manchac-Baton Rouge group was Olivier Daigle and his eight children, including five sons (Victor, François, Simon, Jean-Baptiste, and Honoré) all of whom married Acadian women and reared large families.

During the nineteenth century these and other Acadian Daigle families were small farmers and planters in West Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, and Ascension parishes.

A few members of the Manchac-Baton Rouge group by the late 1780s had migrated to Bayou Lafourche to join the Daigle families sent there earlier; by 1795 six Daigle households were censused along the Lafourche in what is now Assumption Parish.

Among the original Daigle settlers on the Lafourche was Jean-Mathurin and his wife Marie Levron, whose four sons (Jean-Baptiste, Joseph, Mathurin, Jr., and Pierre-Michel) during the nineteenth century settled along the Lafourche near Thibodeauxville and along Bayou Terrebonne near Houma.

The descendants of those families today include most of the Daigle households of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. Finally, prior to the Civil War some descendants of the Lafourche Daigle families migrated to the lower Teche to form still another branch of the clan. For example, as early as 1823 Louis-Maurice Daigle, son of Jean and Marguerite Simoneaux of Lafourche, and his wife Anastasie Braud had gone to the Attakapas where they and their descendants settled along the Teche near Patterson and present Morgan City.

A product of recent country-to-city migration may be seen in today's large Daigle contingent in New Orleans (230 households), which probably comprises members of the clan from various parts of the state