Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch : reduced form of van der Planken, a topographic name for someone who lived near a foot bridge, from Middle Dutch plan(c)ke ‘plank’, ‘board’, or a habitational name for someone from a place named with this word, as for example Ter Planken in Lampernisse, West Flanders.
- Altered form, under Dutch influence of the French Huguenot name Blanck or Blanque (‘the white one’).
- Abraham Verplanck came to New Amsterdam from the Netherlands in about 1635. Gulian Crommein Verplank (1786–1870), a NY legislator was the grandson of the CT statesmen and jurist William Samuel Johnston (1727–1819).