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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (mainly East Midlands), Dutch, and German : from Middle English pi(c)k, Middle Dutch picke, Middle High German bicke ‘pick’, ‘pickaxe’, hence a metonymic occupational name for someone who made pickaxes or used them as an agricultural or excavating tool.
  • North German : metonymic occupational name for a pitch-burner, from Low German pick ‘pitch’.
  • English : possibly from Middle English pike ‘pike’ (the fish), applied as a metonymic occupational name for a fisherman or seller of these fish, or as a descriptive nickname for someone thought to resemple a pike in some way.
  • Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : unexplained.

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