Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch and North German (Hülse) : topographic name for someone who lived where holly grew, Middle Low German huls, hüls.
- English (mainly Lancashire) : habitational name from a place in Cheshire, recorded in the mid 13th century in the forms Holes, Holis, and Holys. This probably represents a Middle English plural of Old English holh ‘hollow’, ‘depression’ (see Hole).