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The riley Surname

riley Name Meaning and History

  1. Irish: variant spelling of Reilly.
  2. English: habitational name from Ryley in Lancashire, so named from Old English ryge ‘rye’ + leah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’. There is a Riley with the same meaning in Devon, but it does not seem to have contributed to the surname, which is more common in northern England.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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riley Family Facts

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Distribution of riley Families in the US in 1920
Number of riley families
 941-1879
 314-940		 1-313
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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The riley name in History

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