Ashleigh

Ashleigh is a female variant spelling of Ashley – a name which was once considered masculine, then became unisex, and is now ultra feminine. Just to make sure everyone knows it, some parents have opted for these dressed-up, flowery spellings like Ashleigh. Originally, Ashley developed as an Anglo-Saxon surname, derived from a place name. We find its roots in the Olde English “æsc” meaning “ash” and “lēah” meaning “wood clearing, meadow” to identify various hamlets situated near an area cleared of ash trees (there are towns called Ashley in Cheshire, Northamptonshire, Kent, Staffordshire and Wiltshire, England, for instance). Surnames derived from place names were either assigned to prominent local landowners or lords of a manor. Location-based surnames were also given to folks who hailed from one town and relocated to another – one would have been given the last name Ashley, for instance, as a means of identification (i.e., the name of his birthplace). Surnames became important in the Middle Ages as a way of identifying citizens in order to tax them, and the surname Ashley first appeared in writing in the 12th century (rendered as Esselega, Aslegh and, finally, Ashley). The same name often looked and sounded quite different in medieval England due to the high rate of illiteracy and the radically different dialects spoken throughout the land. Ashley would not be recorded as a forename (or given name) until the 16th century, and it was only considered masculine back then. It would take another 400 years for Ashley to find her footing as a girl’s name in the 20th century (and now she’s widely considered almost exclusively feminine). Perhaps this has something to do with a certain Celtic influence. The similar sounding name “Aislinn” (pronounced “ASH-ling”) is an Irish girl’s name derived from the Gaelic word “aisling” meaning “dream, vision”. The type of dream is specific to a vision of a beautiful woman from the spirit world. Once dreamt, the dreamer can no longer be content again. She’s just too beautiful to remove from one’s memory. In any case, Ashley is a very popular baby girl’s name in the United States, and, as often happens with popular names, American parents like to mess around with the traditional spelling and produce new modifications such as Ashly, Ashlee and Ashleigh.