From Where Does The Surname Originate? ^{meaning and history}

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Based on forty years research, my immigrant ancestor John Mullis arrived in Virginia in 1658; his probable origin: a Mullis family in Michaelstow Parish, Cornwall county, England, which has been traced to 1483 via tenant rolls of Helstone Manor. In Latin appearing as MOLIS in Devon from the Conquest re: subtenant Roger de Molisof High Sheriff of Devon from 1067, the MULES of Devon. In the parish register of Michaelstow, common variants included Mulles, Mullys, Mullys, Mulleis and Mullies, between 1548 and 1585. The Michaelstow family are the earliest Mullis found in English parish registers thus far transcribed and published.

In the South West of Enlgnad, Mules, a Mullis variants developed in association with land and tax records, post mortem inventories in Latin MOLIS into the sixteenth century, concentrated in Devonshire and dating to the Conquest. Those land holders thus tracked to Baldwin de Meulles in Normandy and barony of Meulles, where Baldwin was born c. 1025, son of Gilbert de Brionne, uncle and protector of Duke William who restored the Meulles barony to Baldwin in 1053. Meulles was the French form of the Latin MOLIS for Millstones, or MILLS..

Since mills were commonplace from earliest times throughout the world, and in Europe the universal Latin used in official record keeping resulted in MOLIS becoming a basis of surname variants virtually everywhere, viz Molis, Mollis, Molles, Moulis, and, of course, Mullis as in England. Notably, Mullis in Switzerland from late fifteenth century in Flums and the surrounding area.

The same linguistic pattern regarding surname development likely evident in connection to low-laying, swampy localities which in Latin were recorded as Mollis, e.g., Mollis, a locality near Flums, Switzerland from thirteenth century. I think the proximity of Mollis to Flums may indicate a toss-up between mollis for the wet place and molis for the mill site at Flums.

- Wm. A. Mullies, Ph. D., author of: A Documentary History OF THE English Mullis Surname: 1053 - 1660; IN Colonial America 1658 - 1790. With an Essay on Spelling and Surname Development, On Variants Molis, Moles, Molles, Mules, Mulliss and Mullies (2014).

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.