Family name origins & meanings
- Scottish, Irish, and English : nickname for an unbridled and licentious man, from Middle English laghless, lawelas (a compound of late Old English lagu ‘law’ (from Old Norse) + the native suffix -l(ē)as ‘without’, ‘lacking’). Reaney suggests additionally that this name may have referred to an outlaw (i.e. one from whom the protection of the law had been withdrawn), but this seems unlikely.