Family name origins & meanings
- Irish (Connacht and Munster) : Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Máille. This is of uncertain derivation. Woulfe suggests a Celtic source maglios ‘prince’, ‘champion’, ‘poet’. There is a Gaelic adjective mall ‘slow’, ‘stately’, and another, málla, meaning ‘sedate’, ‘pleasant’, and an abstract noun máille ‘stateliness’; the source could be any of these.