Before we begin, we must answer one very important question. Is our name spelled Yardley or is our name spelled Yeardley? Both spellings are found throughout historical records from the same time periods. Even though some families dropped the “e”, both spellings are correct. For the purpose of simplifying these project pages, we will use 'Yardley' to refer to both spellings of our name.

With vast migrations of people, there are now Yardley families scattered around the world. World Names Public Profiler, November of 2023, indicates that countries with the largest Yardley surname population are New Zealand, United Kingdom, Australia, United States and Canada. In the United States most Yardleys are found in the state of Utah. Thanks to the advent of Y-Chromosome testing, we can have a better idea of just how many unique Yardley family lines there are.