Selley
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Selley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from Selly Oak, Worcestershire; first attested Richard de Selleia 1203 AssSt.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 112K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 844K
- BMBermuda≈1 in 35K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 148 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)
≈590 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Bermuda, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Selly Oak, Worcestershire; first attested Richard de Selleia 1203 AssSt
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Selley counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 112K | 1.1K | Selley | 120 |
| US United States | 394 | 1 in 844K | 455 | Selley | 148 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 341K | — | Selley | 12 |
| AU Australia | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 208K | — | Selley | 42 |
| CA Canada | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 352K | — | Selley | 46 |
| BM Bermuda | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Selley | 5 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Selley is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Harry Selleyb. 1871GBBritish politician (1871-1960)
- Richard Curtis Selleyb. 1939GBBritish sedimentologist
- Eric Selleyb. 1940ZMbadminton player
- Ian Selleyb. 1974GBEnglish footballer (born 1974)
- Julian N SelleyGBresearcher
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 15 sources across 7 countries.
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Selley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Selly Oak, Worcestershire; first attested Richard de Selleia 1203 AssSt Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Selley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 586 people named Selley in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled selley.
- How common is the name Selley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 394 people named Selley in 2010, about 1 in 844 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Selley?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/selleyThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Selley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.