Hoyle

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English (Yorkshire and Lancashire) : topographic name for someone who lived by a depression or low-lying spot, from Old English holh ‘hole’, ‘hollow’, ‘depression’ (see Hole).
• Irish : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giolla Chomhghaill, a patronymic from a personal name meaning ‘devotee of (Saint) Comhghal’ (see McCool). Woulfe, however, traces Hoyle (as well as MacIlhoyle and McElhill) to Mac Giolla Choille ‘son of the lad of the wood’, which has sometimes been translated as Woods.