Date
Meaning & 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 (2).