Variant of Dallas, from Scottish Gaelic meaning meadow dwelling or waterfall field.
Dallis is an alternate spelling of Dallas, a name with firmly Scottish geographical roots. The place name Dallas in Moray, Scotland, derives from the Scottish Gaelic *dail ghlas*, meaning 'meadow dwelling' or 'water meadow.'
The surname Dallas traveled with Scottish emigrants to North America, where it attached itself to the Texas city named for George Mifflin Dallas, eleventh Vice President of the United States, cementing the name's association with American ambition and wide-open frontier geography. As a given name, Dallas — and the variant spelling Dallis — began appearing in the American South and Southwest during the twentieth century, part of a tradition of honoring place names and family surnames by promoting them to given names. The -is ending of Dallis gives it an androgynous softness that Dallas lacks, and it has been used for both boys and girls, though it leans slightly feminine in contemporary usage.
The name gained cultural visibility through the long-running American television series *Dallas* (1978–1991), which made the word synonymous with oil money, family dynasty, and melodrama of operatic proportions — an association that has both fueled and complicated the name's appeal. Stripped of that baggage, Dallis reads as breezy and distinctly American: geographically rooted, pleasantly unconventional, and carrying just enough Western openness to feel like a name built for wide horizons.