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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (Norfolk) : from Middle English pilch, a metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of pilches or a nickname for a habitual wearer of these. A pilch (from Late Latin pellicia, a derivative of pellis ‘skin’, ‘hide’) was a kind of coarse leather garment with the hair or fur still on it.
  • Polish : nickname from Old Polish pilch ‘gray squirrel’.
  • Jewish (from Ukraine) : metonymic occupational name from Yiddish piltsh ‘felt’ (see 1).

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