MANLEY

(male) Transferred use of the surname, which in most cases originated as a local name from places in Devon and Cheshire, named in Old English as ‘the common wood or clearing’, from (ge)mǣn ‘common, shared’ + lēah ‘wood, clearing’. Its choice as a first name may have been influenced by association with the vocabulary word manly and the hope that the qualities denoted by the adjective would be attributes of the bearer. This word may also lie behind some cases of the surname, as a nickname for a ‘manly’ person.