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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name from a place in Suffolk, named in Old English with mylenas, plural of mylen ‘mill’.
  • Scottish and northern Irish (of Scottish origin) : from an Anglicized form of the Gaelic personal name Maol Íosa ‘devotee of Jesus’.
  • Greek : variant of Melis.
  • Dutch : unexplained.
  • Latvian : nickname from mells ‘black’.

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