From Irish Ó Dálaigh meaning descendant of the assembly member; also an English surname.
Dailey arrives in the given-name canon via the Irish surname tradition, where it represents a variant spelling of Daley or Daly — anglicizations of the Gaelic Ó Dálaigh, meaning 'descendant of Dálach.' The root word 'dál' in Old Irish referred to a meeting, assembly, or gathering, and by extension came to describe a poet or assemblyman — someone whose voice carried authority in communal settings. The Ó Dálaigh family was one of the great hereditary bardic families of medieval Ireland, producing poets who served the Gaelic chieftains and whose compositions were preserved through oral and manuscript traditions.
The most celebrated bearer of the Ó Dálaigh name in Irish history was Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh, a thirteenth-century poet of extraordinary reputation, but the surname carried prestige across generations in counties Clare, Galway, and Roscommon. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, a twentieth-century Irish Supreme Court judge and later President of Ireland from 1974 to 1976, brought the name into modern constitutional prominence. The surname tradition of passing family names forward as first names — particularly in American families tracing Irish ancestry — is how Dailey made its way into the given-name lexicon.
As a first name, Dailey has a light, open quality that reads as genuinely contemporary — the double 'e' ending gives it a gentle feminine cadence, and it works equally well as a middle name. It occupies that appealing niche of names that carry authentic heritage weight without announcing themselves as traditional. Families with Irish ancestry who want something beyond Patrick and Brigid often find that surnames-as-first-names like Dailey strike exactly the right balance between identity and originality.