Getley

This interesting name has two probable origins. The first being a dialectual variant of Gatley, a topographical name for a person who lived on a farm within an enclosure (a gated farm) from the Old English "geat". Alternatively, it is a locational name for a person who had previously lived in a village bearing that name, as in Gateley in Norfolk, or Gatley in Cheshire and Herefordshire, a practice common in the Middle Ages. There is also a remote possibility that the name derives from the Irish Gately, the anglicized form of Mag Athlaoich, meaning "ex-warrior" from the Gaelic "ath", former and "laoch", hero, warrior. Recorded in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster is the Christening of one Mary Getleyin 1592. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Ralph de Gateleia, which was dated 1086, The Domesday Book, Norfolk, during the reign of King William I, William the Conqueror, 1066 - 1087. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.