Crowley
A surname with both English place-name and Irish Gaelic roots, best known in Ireland as an anglicized form of an old Gaelic family name.
The #1,128 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 9,928 Americans shares it.
Etymology
In English, Crowley can be a habitational surname from places called Crawley or Crowley, which in turn come from Old English elements meaning roughly "crow clearing" or "crooked clearing" depending on the place. The provided surname dictionaries also connect it with a French place-name origin in one note, but that is less certain here. In Ireland, Woulfe records Crowley as an anglicized form of Irish Gaelic names written in older spellings such as O'Crualaoich / O'C... forms in the OCR, showing a separate native Irish source for the same surname form.
History
The name appears in English records as a local surname, but Bardsley remarks that the English place-name explanation cannot by itself account for the very large number of Crowleys in the United States. In Ireland, Crowley became established as an anglicized surname of Gaelic families, especially in Munster, and that Irish stream is the main reason the name is common in Irish and Irish-American communities. Modern usage therefore reflects at least two origins that have converged on the same spelling.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because English and Irish families adopted the same spelling, two people named Crowley may have completely different family origins even if their surnames look identical.
From the historical record
“PhiUdelphU,o,o,3,3, Crowley. — Local, 'ofCrowley,' a township in the parish of Great Budworth, co, Chester. But this cannot be the parent of the extra- ordinary number of Crowleys in the States. In the Boston list are”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instancesNotable people named Crowley
- Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.