Powley Family History

English (mainly Norfolk): perhaps a shortened form of Powling either a nickname for someone with a distinctive head or hair or who had a shaved head (from an unrecorded Middle English polling a derivative of Middle English polle ‘head hair of the head’ or pollen ‘to cut (hair) shave (someone's head)’ + the noun-forming suffix -ing);

or a habitational name from Poling in Sussex; or a variant of Pullan and Pullen.

Probably an altered form of German Pauli or Pauly.