Boyle
A surname with both Irish and Scottish roots, often explained as meaning someone descended from O’Buidheill or as a Norman name linked to Boville/Boyville.
The #866 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 7,734 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Boyle has more than one traditional explanation. Some genealogists derive it from Irish O’Buidheill, treating it as a Gaelic patronymic; others connect it with a Norman French local name written in medieval records as Boyvill or Boyvile, later associated with Boville. The name was therefore understood in the 19th-century scholarship as either a Gaelic clan surname or an anglicized Norman form, and the two lines may not be easy to separate in every family.
History
Lower gives a Scottish example, Sir Richard Boyle, and suggests a Norman-descended family in Scotland, while also noting that some authorities preferred an Irish origin from O’Buidheill. Barber explicitly ties Boyle to the Irish O'Baoighill, and Charnock likewise treats Boyle as Irish. Because the surname appears prominently in both Ireland and Scotland, modern usage often reflects more than one historical stream.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The powerful Boyle family in Scotland included Sir Richard Boyle, father of Sir Robert Boyle, the well-known 17th-century natural philosopher.
From the historical record
“BOYKETT. A corruption of Boycott. BOYLE. Sir Richard B., father of Sir Robert B., one of the barons of Scotland '(\ho swore fealty to Edw. I. in 129G, was of Kelburne in N.B. It is probable that he was of Norman descent, and that the sur- name is a modification of Boville, as it was written Boyvill or Boyvile in…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom