Hawley
A largely English place-based surname, originally meaning someone from a place called Hawley or a nearby hedged meadow.
The #1,993 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 17,058 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hawley is usually treated as a locational surname, taken from one of several English places called Hawley. Older writers also analyzed it as if it meant something like "haw" or hedge + "ley" meaning a meadow or clearing, reflecting the landscape sense of the name. In that reading, it points to a person who lived by a hedged field or a place where hawthorn grew.
History
The name appears in English records as a local surname, and later spread through Britain and to North America. 19th-century surname writers linked it especially with English place-names in Hampshire and other counties, and some also associated it with Hawley in Kent and other localities. In the United States it is established but not especially common, consistent with an English immigrant surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname dictionaries sometimes grouped Hawley with other "haw-" names such as Haworth and Hawthorn because all of them evoke hedges, enclosures, or thorny landscape features.
From the historical record
“in Eng. Sum. ii. 191. HAWLEY. Places in Hampshire and other counties. HAWTAINE. HAWTYN. O. Fr. hauUain, " hautie, loftie, statelie, proud, highminded, surlie, disdainfull, arrogant." Cotgr. HAWTHORNE. Hawthorn, a township m the parish of Easington, co. Durham, memorable for the fifty shipwrecks which happened there…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom