Stiles
A surname usually from living by a stile or gate; in some cases it may reflect the old byname Stile rather than a true plural.
The #1,689 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 14,456 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Stiles is generally explained as a habitation surname from Middle English stile, meaning a set of steps or a passage over a fence or wall. In that sense, it would originally have described someone who lived near a stile or by a gate-like crossing point. Some older surname writers also noted that the final -s can be a genitive ending rather than a plural, so Stiles may literally mean 'at the stile' or 'of the stile.'
History
The surname is recorded in England in medieval and later sources, and the spelling with -s became established alongside Style and Stile. It also travelled to North America early and remains fairly common there today. A few older books tried to connect it with other names or local placenames, but the living-by-a-stile explanation is the standard one.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Nineteenth-century surname writers explicitly warned that forms like Stiles can look plural even when they are not, since the -s may simply be an old possessive ending.
From the historical record
“STILEMAN = Stile (q.v.) -I- E. man. STILES, pi., and genit., of Stile, q.v. STILL (Eng.) i Silent, Quiet, Gentle [M.E. O.E. stille] Walter StiWe.—Hund. Rolls. (occ.) 2 a weak form of Steel, q.v. STILLINGFLEET (Eng.) Bel. to Stilling- fleet (Yorks), i4tncent. Stilyngflete, Domes-”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)