Wadley
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wadley is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: From Wadley, Berkshire, perhaps 'Wada's glade' or 'glade where woad grows'.
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Wadley, Berkshire, perhaps 'Wada's glade' or 'glade where woad grows'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Wadley is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, so called from OE wad woad (see Wader) or the personal name Wade (see Wade i) + leah wood, clearing. Wadsworth see Wordsworth
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A placename:
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)
- Mary Millen Wadleyb. 1848(1848-1936)
- Marie Wadleyb. 1906USAmerican museum founder
- Preston Wadleyb. 1952USAmerican multimedia artist
- Veronica Wadleyb. 1952GBBritish journalist
- Akrum Wadleyb. 1995USAmerican football player (born 1995)
- Jay Wadleyb. 2000USAmerican film composer and multi-instrumentalist
- Antonia L. Wadleyb. 2000ZAresearcher
- Lyn WadleyZASouth African archaeologist
- Bryce N. Wadleybotanist
- Greg WadleyAUresearcher
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 19 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4K | #8,342 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.7K | #8,512 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.6K | #8,437 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 950 | #6,895 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 6 | #89,778 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #411,633 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #28,712 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Wadley mean, and where does it come from?
- From Wadley, Berkshire, perhaps 'Wada's glade' or 'glade where woad grows'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Wadley have the most bearers?
- Wadley is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Wadley?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wadleyThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Wadley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.