283 Global TITLEY Family Members

TITLEY Family History

This unusual habitational name derives from a now "lost" village in the former West Riding of Yorkshire but now effectively in Lancashire. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal name "Toeta" or its Norse-Viking equivalent "Teitr" meaning "Cheerful" plus the suffix "leah" - a wood or clearing. There are an estimated 7000 such "lost" sites in Britain and Ireland, some cleared by plague, but mostly the clearance was to enable "Sheep Farming" to take place. The inhabitants displaced, often had only a vague idea as to the spelling of their former village name, from which they took their surname, hence the variety of spelling, as in this case; Tetley, Titley, Tetla, Tetlow and Tettley.