Ely Surname

Ely
English: habitational name from the cathedral city on an island in the fens north of Cambridge. It is so named from Old English ?l ‘eel’ + ge ‘district’.
Probably also an Americanized form of German Eley.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Eley
English: variant spelling of Ely.
German: from a short form of the personal name Eligius (see Loy).
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4


The name Ely came to England with the ancestors of the Ely family in the Norman Conquest of 1066. It comes from Fitz Elie, the name of a distinguished Norman family who came to England in 1066 with William the Conqueror's invasion.

Anglo-Norman names tend to be marked by an enormous number of spelling variations. This is largely due to the fact that Old and Middle English lacked any spelling rules when Norman French was introduced in the 11th century. The languages of the English courts at that time were French and Latin. These various languages mixed quite freely in the evolving social milieu. The final element of this mix is that medieval scribes spelled words according to their sounds rather than any definite rules, so a name was often spelled in as many different ways as the number of documents it appeared in. The name was spelled Ely, Elie, Ealy and others.

First found in Cambridgeshire where they were seated from very early times and were granted lands by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D.

Because of the political and religious discontent in England, families began to migrate abroad in enormous numbers. Faced with persecution and starvation at home, the open frontiers and generally less oppressive social environment of the New World seemed tantalizing indeed to many English people. The trip was difficult, and not all made it unscathed, but many of those who did get to Canada and the United States made important contributions to the young nations in which they settled. Some of the first North American settlers with Ely name or one of its variants: Elizabeth Ely who settled in Virginia in 1623; Nathaniel Ely settled in Cambridge Mass. in 1630; Walter Ely settled in Virginia in 1621.