In many baby name books, Shelley is listed as meaning "From the meadow on the ledge" or "clearing on a bank" sometimes truthful and pretty. It is Old English in origin. As with many other names (Ashley, Courtney, etc.), Shelley is today a name given almost exclusively to girls after historically being male. Shelley is also a transferred surname used by those in Essex, Suffolk and Yorkshire, particularly in settlements where a wood/clearing was beside a ledge or hillside.
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Famous quotes containing the word shelley:
“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Sun-girt City! thou hast been
Ocean’s child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)