Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch : from a short form of the personal name Gelein, from French Ghi(s)lain, a Latinization of a Germanic personal name built on the element gīsil ‘pledge’ (see Giesel).
- Dutch : occupational name for a grower of or dealer in flax, from Middle High German līn ‘flax’.
- Dutch : habitational name from any of several farmsteads in Trøndelag, so named from Old Norse lein ‘slope’.