origin
The name HAWLEY is fragrantly significant of blossoming and sweetly perfumed hedge rows and rich verdant pastures, threaded with meandering brooks and dotted with clumps of clustering oaks. Its old Saxon derivation is expressive of the quiet and content of rural life. Haw means a green plot in a valley or small field in a meadow; but is more commonly construed as a fruit or berry, like the berries of the pink and white hawthorn which grow by the roadsides and laneways of the Old Country. Ley or lea is a pasture field, as is commonly used in England as a favorite word of poets.
other possible versions of this surname
links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawley_%28surname%29
- http://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/hh4aa/hawley1.php (membership required to view without interruption)
- http://www.hawleysociety.org/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Hawley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawley_baronets
- http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.hawley/mb.ashx
- http://genforum.genealogy.com/hawley/