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My understanding of the background of my name is that it came about by a mistake at Ellis Island. My ancestors were supposedly members of the MacKenzie Clan living in Ireland in a small village named either Castle Leigh or Castleleigh. When processing thru Ellis Island, the Registrar misunderstood an answer (or my ancestors misunderstood the question) and wrote down the family surname as Costley (I guess from how my ggg-parent pronounced "Castle Leigh").

Well, that's the verbal family history of our name ...

"it came about by a mistake at Ellis Island."

Many families have a similar story of misheard names and misspellings at Ellis Island. Then, that new surname carried on for generations. Based on information from older relatives and old records, the first and last names of many of my Italian ancestors were changed there. Officials sometimes changed the spellings, dropped vowels, or wrote down the English version of a name. They had to process so many immigrants that they probably rushed them all through. To English-speaking ears, the Italian pronunciation of certain letters sound similar to each other. We think the officials misheard the names, and then our g-grandparents and grandparents just went with it. But, some old documents show different spellings.