Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places so called. Most, including those in Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, and West Yorkshire, are named from Old English wulf ‘wolf’ or perhaps the personal name or byname Wulf (see Wolf) + lēah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’. One example in Somerset, however, has as its first element Middle English wolle, wulle ‘spring’, ‘stream’ (see Wool 2).