English place name and surname meaning linden tree meadow, from Old English 'lind' and 'leah.'
Lindley is an English place-name and surname carried into use as a given name, built from the Old English *lind* — the linden or lime tree, long associated with protection, healing, and the meeting of communities in Germanic tradition — and *leah*, meaning a woodland clearing or meadow. It therefore names, literally, a clearing among linden trees: a dappled, particular place in the pre-Norman English landscape. Several villages named Lindley exist in Yorkshire and Leicestershire, and the surname spread outward from those communities through the ordinary mechanisms of English hereditary naming.
As a given name, Lindley gained particular traction in the United States during the nineteenth century through the Quaker tradition of using family surnames as given names — a practice that preserved maternal lineages and expressed community belonging. The American botanist John Lindley (1799–1865), a Briton who classified thousands of plant species and organized the Royal Horticultural Society, gave the name botanical prestige, and the naming of Lindleya (a genus of flowering shrubs) in his honor reinforced the connection. In this way Lindley carries both arboreal and botanical associations, doubly rooted in the natural world.
In contemporary use, Lindley belongs to the appealing category of surname-style names with nature roots — comparable to Hadley, Finley, or Bramley — that feel at once traditional and fresh. It works equally well for boys and girls, which adds to its current appeal in an era of gender-flexible naming. The linden tree connection is particularly resonant: in Norse mythology the linden was sacred to Freya, and in Central European tradition the village linden was where judgments were made and songs were sung — a tree of both justice and joy.