Tinsley
A habitational surname meaning “from Tinsley,” a place name in Yorkshire.
The #2,361 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 19,994 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Tinsley is a place-based surname from Tinsley in Yorkshire. The place name is generally explained from an Old English personal name in the possessive form plus hlāw, meaning “hill” or “mound,” so the original sense was something like “Tyne’s hill.” Older sources also connect the first element with an early English personal name related to Tyn(e)berht, but the exact form is not fully certain.
History
Historical surname dictionaries record Tinsley as a local or territorial name tied to the Yorkshire place. It appears in medieval records of the place as forms such as Tyneslawe and similar spellings, showing the older hill-name element clearly. As with many English locational surnames, it spread when people moved away from the original parish or chapelry and were identified by their place of origin.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The ending -ley here is misleading to modern eyes: in this surname’s place-name background, the older element is not “lea” or “field” but Old English hlāw, “hill.”
From the historical record
“TINSLAY 1 (Eng.) Bel. to Tinsley (Yorks), TINSLEY \ 14th cent. Tyneslawe, Domesday TIN SLY J Tineslawe [O.E. hlAw, a hill, tu- mulus: the pers. name is evid. that seen in Tyneberht, the name of a gth-cent. bishop of Lichfield, which again is a var. of the fairly-common A.-Sax. pers. name Tun- beip)rht = World…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)