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In records of Court of Star Chamber in 1585 London relating to the first known Mullis family in England, court clerks wrote the following forms interchangeably :

Mulys, Mullys, Mullis, Mulles and Mullies. The family resided in Michaelstow Parish, Cornwall, its immediate ancestry based on manorial court records dating to 1483. Other forms found concerning this family include: Molis, Moles, Mollys, and are found in the same region of Cornwall dating to thirteenth century, almost always in connection with the landed Devonian gentry family of MULES which held lands continuously from Domesday Survey of 1086 through 1396 in Western Devon and Eastern Cornwall; a pedigreed family from Norman French Meulles knights at Hastings in 1066, consistently rendered MOLIS in phonetic Latin, the medieval legal recording language used in probate Inquisitiones Post Mortem and land taxes: Knight's Fees... All the above forms found cross-indexed under Molis by scholars, including Mullis. Mullis is not found in the Meulles/Molis/Mules pedigree, as it came into existence long after a non-inheriting cadet lineage of Mules/Molis descended into the commons. The same regulations affecting inheritance of land holdings (eldest son only) applied to the right to bear heraldic arms. In 1620 Robert Mullis of Michaelstow Parish put in a claim to King's Herald for the right to armorial (heraldic) arms: his claim was denied for unknown reasons. Probably the family retained an oral tradition that the Mullis were descended from medieval Molis individuals of the gentry Mules/Molis family in Devon.

This surname derives from the eleventh century Norman French meulles, meaning 'barony' in Normandy. Rendered phonetically as Molis in Latin, the legal recording language of the middle ages, it became Mules, Mulles, Mullis and Mullies in modern languages of Europe.