Handley
A surname usually meaning someone from one of several English places called Handley or Hanley, though some early writers also linked it to Norman Andely.
The #3,657 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 31,757 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Handley is most commonly a locational surname, taken from places called Handley in Cheshire and Dorset, and sometimes linked by older scholars with similar Hanley place-names. The English place-name element is usually understood as Old English, with the second element likely meaning a clearing or woodland glade, though exact local forms vary. Some 19th-century authorities also suggested a Norman source from Andely (Andelys) in Normandy, so the name can be partly mixed in historical explanation.
History
The name appears in medieval records in forms such as de Handley and related spellings, showing its use as a byname for people who came from a specific place. Later surname dictionaries treated it as English by default, but also noted a possible Norman connection through families recorded in medieval England. The surname is established in Britain and later spread to North America and other English-speaking regions.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
An older source even suggested that Handley might sometimes reflect a Norman family name from Andely near Rouen, not just an English village surname.
From the historical record
“HANDLEY. There are parislies so called in Cheshire and Dorset; but the name may with equal probability spring from Andeli, in Normandy, famous as the residence of Coeur de Lion, as the birth-place of Poussin, the painter, and for the tomb of Corneille, the dramatist. Richer de An- deli was a capital tenant in…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom