Dolling Family History

From an unrecorded Middle English word *dolling, *douling, or *dulling meaning ‘dull person’. Compare Doll. Post-medieval examples of the name may also have arisen from a late assimilation of rl to ll in Dorling, a variant of Darling.

Samuel Dorling 1770 is identical with Samuel Dolling 1782 in Parish Registers (West Stow, Suffolk).

Here the pronunciation of the first syllable of Dolling may alternatively be with a short o like that in modern doll.

Alternatively, it may be a post-medieval variant of Dowland.