NURI.  Syrian name meaning "gypsy."

    Gypsy, Hungarian, Slavonian, Indian, and Italian witches, however they may differ from those of Western Europe on theological grounds, agree with them in meeting for the purposes of riotous dancing and debauchery.  It has been observed that this kind of erotic dancing appears to have been cultivated in the East, and even in Europe, from the earliest times, by a class of women who, if not absolutely proved to be gypsies, had at any rate many points of resemblances with them.  "The Syrian girl who haunts the taverns round," described by VIRGIL, suggests the Syrian and Egyptian dancer, who is evidently of Indo-Persian--that is to say of Nuri, or gypsy--origin.  The Spanish dancing girls of remote antiquity have been conjectured to have come from this universal Hindoo Romany stock... (Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, Leland, 1891).