An English surname derived from the word 'motley' meaning varied or multicolored, used as a given name.
Motley is an English surname and adjective with roots in Middle English, likely derived from a place name or from the Old French "medlee" (mixed, variegated), which also gives us "medley." Historically, "motley" referred most famously to the multicolored patchwork fabric worn by the court jester — the professional fool whose privileged role allowed him to speak uncomfortable truths to royalty. Shakespeare knew this well: in As You Like It, the melancholic Jacques famously envies the fool Touchstone his "motley coat," calling it a vehicle for wisdom.
To be motley was to contain multitudes, to be the only one in the court who could say what no one else dared. As a surname, Motley is perhaps most recognized through Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary (1966), and before her, John Lothrop Motley, the nineteenth-century American historian and diplomat. The name gained a very different cultural register in the 1980s when the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe — the deliberate umlaut a piece of theatrical mischief — made it synonymous with glam rock excess and rebellion.
As a given name, Motley is genuinely rare and carries a certain audacious creativity. A child named Motley announces from the start an embrace of complexity, color, and refusal of a single category. It is a name for someone expected to be interesting, irreducible, and perhaps a little theatrical — in the best tradition of the court fool who sees most clearly precisely because he wears the patchwork.
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