This is an English lcoational name of Anglo-Saxon origin, from any of the places called Stockleigh or Stockley in the counties of Devonshire and Staffordshire and in County Durham, for instance. The placenames are first recorded as respectively, "Stochelie", (Domesday Book 1086), "Stochilea", (1170), and "Stocaleia" (1308) and the meaning is either "wood from which stocks (felled tree trunks or stumps) were obtained, derived from the Old English pre 7th Century "Stocc", a stump or uprooted tree trunk with "leah" a wood or glade or "the wood or glade belonging to the farm", from the Old English "stoc", dairy-farm or place with "leah" as before. John and Mary Stockley were early emigrants to the New World, they are recorded as obtaining tickets to sail from Barbados to Jamaica on the Ship the "Two Brothers" in February 1678. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Pagan de Stockleye, which was dated 1279, The Oxfordshire Hundred Rolls, during the reign of King Edward I, The Hammer of the Scots, 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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