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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (mainly East Anglia) : metonymic occupational name for someone who dealt in weights and measures, for example a grain factor, from Middle English pekke ‘peck’ (an old measure of dry goods equivalent to eight quarts or a quarter of a bushel).
  • English : variant of Peak 1.
  • Irish : variant of Peak 2.
  • South German : variant of Beck.
  • North German and Dutch : metonymic occupational name for someone who prepared or sold pitch, from Middle Low German pek, Middle Dutch pec, pic.
  • Dutch : from Middle Dutch pec, pick ‘desperate straits’, hence a nickname for a person in difficult circumstances or perhaps for someone with a gloomy disposition.

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