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:
“‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift—”
—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)