Carlyle
A Scottish surname taken from the place name Carlisle, meaning someone who came from that border city.
The #9,357 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 88,822 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Carlyle is a spelling variant of Carlisle, the Cumberland city on the Anglo-Scottish border. The surname is locational: it identified someone as being from Carlisle or, more broadly, from that district. The place-name itself is ancient and complex, but in surname use the key sense is simply “of Carlisle.”
History
The name appears in Scotland and northern England, where surnames based on nearby towns were especially common. Historical spellings vary, including Carlisle, Carlyle, Carllle, and Corlill, reflecting regional pronunciation and ordinary spelling fluctuation. The surname is best known through the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle, which helped fix this form in modern usage.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Bardsley explicitly treats Carlyle as a local surname connected with Carlisle and notes that the spelling changed after the name crossed the border.
From the historical record
“local, and his ■ forbears ' had wan- dered but a few miles from their original home ; cC Thomas Carlyle ^nd the city Carlisle (v. Carlisle). -sidt is a common auffii of north English local names, used in the •wme sense as lake-side, pit-side ;”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances