Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch and German : possibly from a short form of the personal name Amelis, Amilius, a Latinization of a Germanic compound name with initial Amal- ‘bravery’, ‘vigor’; or of the Roman family name Aemilius.
- German : habitational name from a place called Mehle near Elze in Lower Saxony.
- Slovenian : unexplained; possibly an adoption of the German name. In Slovenia this name is found mainly in the capital, Ljubljana.
- Norwegian (Mæ(h)le) : habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads in western Norway named Mele, from meli, the dative case of Old Norse melr ‘sandbank’, ‘gravel bank’. (Compare Mahle 2.)
