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origins
Before the American Revolution, at least four different variations of the Dailey name have been documented: French, English, Scotch-Irish, and Irish. There were never many settlers from France in the British Colonies, but there was a prominent pre-Revolutionary French d’Ally family in New Jersey. Several descendants of this family later settled in North Carolina. There were also a few English “Dally” immigrants who may also have originally been French. One "Dally" family from England arrived in Maine in the 1600s and later settled in New Jersey.
Two very different groups of Daileys immigrated from Ireland and account for most of the Daileys in America. The first group of Irish to arrive in the Colonies left from Northern Ireland, but their ancestors were originally from the border region between Scotland and England. The Scotch-Irish typically spelled Daily name with an ‘i’, possibly after the village of “Daily” in southwestern Scotland from where they may have originated. The name comes from the Gaelic word for field or meadow, appropriate since the region has been described as “not exceeded by any in the County for beauty.”
The Irish version of the name has an ancient origin which has been traced back to the fourth century in Ireland. The earliest Gaelic form was “Siel-na-Dalaigh” or “one who is present for assemblies. The introduction of the English language into Ireland in the twelfth century caused several variations of the name to come into use: O’Daly, Daly, Daley, Dailey, Dayley, Dawlie. In Ireland, Daly is one of the top 25 most common surnames. Over time, the spellings of the name from all four geographical regions have tended to converge, to be Americanized into “Dailey,” although significant numbers retain alternate spellings.