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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name from Mackley in Derbyshire, which may have been named in Old English as ‘Macca’s forest’, from an unattested personal name + lēah ‘woodland clearing’, ‘glade’.
  • Scottish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Donnshleibhe ‘son of Donnshleibhe’, a personal name literally meaning ‘brown hill’.
  • Probably also an Americanized form of German Mä(g)gli (see Magley).

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