Family name origins & meanings
- English (East Anglia) : nickname meaning ‘diver’, from an agent derivative of Middle English douke(n) ‘to dive’ (a word that is probably related to duck (the bird)).
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : unexplained.
- North German (Dücker) and Dutch : from the term for a duck or diving bird (from du(c)ken ‘to dive or duck’), probably applied as a nickname for someone thought to resemble the duck, but perhaps in some cases a metonymic occupational name for fowler or for a furrier who used the pelts of diving birds in his trade.