Milo, the variant of the name used most often during the medieval era, might also have been influenced by the Slavic ending word element -mil, meaning gracious.

The original name of Miles (bishop of Susa), an Orthodox Christian saint, was Mylas.

It was popularized in England by Myles Coverdale, who produced the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English in 1535.

In the United States, the name became well-known due to Myles Standish, a soldier who arrived on Plymouth Rock on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims in 1620.

American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a popular 1858 poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish, in which the fictionalized Standish is rejected by Priscilla Mullins, who chooses John Alden as her husband instead.