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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name from either of two places in Yorkshire called Wortley. The one near Barnsley is named with Old English wyrt ‘plant’, ‘vegetable’ + lēah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’; the one near Leeds probably has as its first element an unattested Old English personal name, Wyrca, perhaps a short form of a compound name with a first element weorc ‘work’, ‘fortification’.

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