Family name origins & meanings
- German : apparently from Fahnestock, literally ‘flag pole’, but according to family history an altered form of Fahrenstuck (Fahrenstück), which is a topographic name either from Middle Low German vor(n) ‘swamp’, ‘bog’, or from the fused preposition and definite article vorn ‘before the’, ‘in front of the’ + Middle High German stück ‘piece (of land)’, ‘field’.
- Johann Diedrich Fahrenstuck arrived in 1726 in New York from Hagen, Germany. From the second generation onward, the name has been conventionally spelled as Fahnestock, after a variety of spellings of the name in early colonial records.