Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from Mackley in Derbyshire, which may have been named in Old English as ‘Macca’s forest’, from an unattested personal name + lēah ‘woodland clearing’, ‘glade’.
- Scottish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Donnshleibhe ‘son of Donnshleibhe’, a personal name literally meaning ‘brown hill’.
- Probably also an Americanized form of German Mä(g)gli (see Magley).