Poling Family History

Probably from German habitational name from Polling (Bavaria, Austria). English (Sussex and Hampshire) and Irish: variant of either Poland or Powling, either a habitational name from Poling in Sussex or a nickname from an unrecorded Middle English polling, a derivative of Middle English polle ‘head, hair of the head’.

Alternatively, it could derive from pollen ‘to cut (hair), shave (someone's head)’ + the noun-forming suffix -ing. It may have been given to someone with a distinctive head of hair or who had a shaven head.