Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places so named. Those in Cheshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Warwickshire are named from an Old English wilig ‘willow’ + Old English lēah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’; one in Devon probably has Old English wīðig ‘willow’ as the first element, while one in Surrey has Old English wēoh ‘(pre-Christian) temple’.
- English : variant spelling of Willy 2.
- English : Isaac Willey is recorded in Boston, MA, in 1640, and went on to be one of the founders of New London, CT. His descendent Samuel Hopkins Willey (1821–1914) was one of the founders of the College of California at Berkeley in 1860.