This unusual and interesting name is a dialectal variant of a name of English origin, Wooldridge and is itself from the Old English and Anglo Saxon pre 7th Century given name 'Wulfric', composed of the elements 'wulf' wolf and 'ric', power, thus wolf, - powerful. The popularity of the name allowed it to survive the Normanising of the Poll Tax period, when many Saxon names were lost. In the modern idiom there are many variants of this name which include Wollrich, Woolrych, Woolridge, Wolrich, Wolrige, Woolwright, Urry, Hurry, Orry, Ullrich and Ulrik. One, Elizabeth Hurry was christened on August 22nd 1549 in St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, London. On June 22nd 1578, Thomas Hurry married Elizabeth Foster in St. Dunstan's Stepney, London. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Wulfric, which was dated 1212, in the Curia Rolls, Berkshire, during the reign of King John, known as 'Lackland', 1199 - 1216. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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