Cawley
A surname with several overlapping origins, most often explained as an Irish or English form related to MacAuley/Macaulay or to a local place-name.
The #6,268 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 56,640 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Cawley is historically explained in more than one way. Irish sources often treat it as a shortened or anglicized form of MacAulay, MacCauley, or related Gaelic names, while English surname dictionaries also connect it with place-name forms such as Calley/Cailli. In that sense, the name may be either patronymic in Irish usage or locational in English usage, and the spelling Cawley can reflect later simplification of several older forms.
History
19th- and early-20th-century surname books commonly cross-reference Cawley with MacAulay and Calley rather than giving it a single certain origin. In Irish contexts, it appears alongside MacCauley and MacCowley as an anglicized surname form; in English contexts, it is linked to place-name surnames of Norman or local English origin. Because the spelling could arise from different roots in different families, the surname’s history is mixed rather than uniform.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname dictionaries explicitly file Cawley under more than one headword, showing that the same spelling was used for unrelated family lines.
From the historical record
“CAWDREY. See Cowdery. CAWLEY^ See Calley. CAWOOD. A parish in Y'orkshlre. CAWSTON. CAUSTON. A parish in Norfolk. CAWTHORN. A parish in Y^orkshire. CAXTON. The illustrious printer was born in Kent about the year 1412. The name occurs in Sussex in 1341, (Nona^,)”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom