Names That Mean Meadow

Young actor Haley Joel Osment to the contrary, this name in all its variations has become too popular for girls to survive as a boys' choice. Hailey, Haily Halley, Hallie, Hayley. 

Haley

The name of a large Air Force base in the US, Langley is a surname style choice that may appeal to fans of Langston, Landon, and Oakley, but also Banner, Navy, and Cannon. Quietly used for boys in the 20th century, it has leaned slightly feminine since the 1990s after actress Mariel Hemmingway chose it for one of her daughters.

Langley

Undiscovered single-syllable surname option, a friendly alternative to Reed. 

Mead

Gently pleasant English family name long associated with 60-Minuteman Morley Safer. 

Morley

And if it's triplets: Pembroke, Pendleton, and Penley. 

Penley

Fresh choice in the vein of Carly and Harley.

Perfect example of how your perception of a name can change when you apply it to the opposite gender: when used for a girl, Stanley suddenly becomes an attractive, upper-crusty name ala Ansley or Finley.

Stanley

Kimberly is a variation of the South African (and Australian) place name Kimberley, named after John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley. The name comes from a Norfolk earldom (first spelled Chineburlai) and references the meadow or woodland clearing of a medieval Lady called Cyneburga.

 In the middle of the 20th century, shortened form Kim was given to men and women in roughly equal numbers, though Kimberly has always been more associated with women.

Kimberly

The cake company pretty much knocked this otherwise-pretty compilation name out of consideration for most parents.

Saralee

Prideaux is a Cornish place name and surname that is occasionally attested as a girls' first name. It likely stems from the French phrase "pré de eaux", meaning meadow of waters. For fans of Margaux, Prideaux might be a less-common and very pretty alternative.

Prideaux

Heartly

Waverly, with its literary resonance and lilting three-syllable sound, could well become the next generation's successor to Kimberly. Although, like Kimberly, it's overwhelmingly catching on for girls. Its cool, bohemian surname feel places it among the new stylish <a href="https://nameberry.com/baby-names/501/english-names-for-girls">English names for girls</a>, successors to Ashley and Whitney.
 Spelled Waverley, this is the title of Sir Walter Scott's popular 1814 novel, whose hero is a young English soldier named Edward Waverley (it's believed that Scott named the novel after the model of pen he used to write it). Spelled the more streamlined way, Waverly is the name of the daughter of Buttercup and Wesley in The Princess Bride and a memorable character in The Joy Luck Club, who was named by her Chinese mother for the San Francisco street on which the family lived.
 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village was named for the Scott novel in 1833 – dropping the second 'e', and was the setting of the teen show The Wizards of Waverly Place, as well as Don Draper's bachelor pad in Mad Men and a character on Friday Night Lights.

Waverly

An English surname originally denoting someone living near a farmstead in the forest. Makes an attractive and unusual addition to the -ley name family.

Winley

This rare vintage name can be an alternative spelling of Abilene, a Biblical place name. It is also a Spanish and German feminine form of Abel. 

Abeline

Braydi

Buckingham is an English surname, denoting one's ancestors lived in Buckinghamshire county. The place name was firstly Buccingaham, composed of the components inga, meaning "people of," and hamm, the Old English word for "water meadow." Bucc refers to an Anglo-Saxon chieftain named Bucca, who, in theory, settled the land.

Buckingham

In an earlier time Shirley was used primarily for boys, but the tide turned with the publication of Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley in 1849, the story of a character whose parents had selected the name for a boy child, then decided to use it anyway when he turned out to be a she.

 Shirley peaked for boys at #259 in 1935, the same year it reached its peak of #2 for girls in the US. A famous fictional male namesake is Shirley Blythe, son of Anne and Gilbert Blythe in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books. Shirley was Anne's maiden name.

Shirley

An English surname used mononymously by the American singer-songwriter and record producer Breland (born Daniel Gerard Breland), who could certainly boost his cool name into the limelight.

 Also spelled Breeland, it is related to the German surname Breler or Brehler, referring to someone who lived by farmland or wet pasture.

Breland

Kimberley is a town in South Africa associated with diamonds and with wealth and luxury in general. It was name for Lord Kimberley, whose surname derived from an English place name. Used for boys in the early twentieth century, it re-emerged as a girls' name in the 1940s, usually spelled Kimberly.

Kimberley

English surname most notably used by Ashley Hebert for her son in 2014.