Family name origins & meanings
- English (chiefly Yorkshire) : habitational name from any of various places so called, for example in Cheshire, Gloucestershire, and West Yorkshire. The first is from a lost place in Lower Bebington, named from Old English hol ‘hollow’ + weg ‘way’; the second is from Old English hol + lēah ‘woodland clearing’; and the last, Howley Hall in Moreley, is from Old English hōfe ‘ground ivy’ + lēah.
- Irish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hUallaigh ‘descendant of Uallach’, a personal name or byname from uallach ‘proud’.