There are several accounts of how Cowley acquired its name, but in all of them the credit is given to Mr. F. Godsal, a prominent land owner in the district. One account states that Mr. Godsal had as a visitor Lord Cowley from England and that the village was named after him in honour of his stay. Another, and the most commonly believed, is that one evening Mr. Godsal, a poetic soul, observing his cattle stringing out to water at the big spring was reminded of the line from Gray's "Elegy," "The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea." Lea or ley, was the Anglo-Saxon word for pasture, and so when asked to give the new town a name, he named it Cowley. The third version is that the new village was named after Mr. Godsal's home in England, which was Cowley, Oxford.

On Highway 3, approximately 6 km east south-east of Lundbreck.