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The bailey Surname

bailey Name Meaning and History

  1. status name for a steward or official, Middle English bail(l)i (Old French baillis, from Late Latin baiulivus, an adjectival derivative of baiulus ‘attendant’, ‘carrier’ ‘porter’).
  2. topographic name for someone who lived by the outer wall of a castle, Middle English bail(l)y, baile ‘outer courtyard of a castle’, from Old French bail(le) ‘enclosure’, a derivative of bailer ‘to enclose’, a word of unknown origin. This term became a place name in its own right, denoting a district beside a fortification or wall, as in the case of the Old Bailey in London, which formed part of the early medieval outer wall of the city.
  3. habitational name from Bailey in Lancashire, named with Old English beg ‘berry’ + leah ‘woodland clearing’.
  4. Anglicized form of French Bailly.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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The bailey name in History

A unique volume of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary following the bailey family name as far back in history as possible.

bailey Family Facts

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Distribution of bailey Families in the US in 1920
Number of bailey families
 1126-2249
 376-1125		 1-375
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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