Hartley

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A family name of English origin, or the name of several small English towns and villages ; a logarithmic unit for measuring information, based on base-ten logarithms
2. An English surname shared by many people, also borne by small English villages ; a unit of information measured with base-ten logarithms, also called a ban
3. A common English family name, and the designation of various small English settlements ; a unit used in information theory that is based on the common logarithm

Etymology: The name "Hartley" is one of those English surnames that began as a place name before becoming a family name. It derives from Old English elements meaning "hart" (a male deer) and "leah" (a clearing or meadow), so the sense is roughly "deer clearing." Many English family names took this route, with a village or farm name becoming the label for the people who lived there. As a common surname, it is not a term with a technical sense of its own, and its everyday use is simply as a name for people. The unit most readers will meet in a technical context, however, is the hartley, named after Ralph Hartley (1888–1970), an electronics researcher. He is the namesake of the unit used in information theory, where it measures information in a logarithmic scale, and the word is therefore a surname that has also been adopted as a scientific term.