Paley

Family name origins & meanings

• English (Yorkshire) : possibly a nickname for someone with pale or lustreless eyes, from Middle English pale ‘pale’ + eye ‘eye’.
• English : from an Old Scandinavian personal name, Old Danish Palli or Old Swedish Palle, probably originally an ethnic name meaning ‘Pole’.
• French : habitational name from a place in Seine-et-Marne, probably originally derived from Latin palus ‘post’, ‘stake’ + suffix -etum.
• Jewish (from Belarus), Belorussian, and Ukrainian : occupational name for a distiller, from an eastern Slavic word meaning ‘to burn’ (Russian palit, Ukrainian palyty) + the Slavic noun suffix -ej.