Last name: WINCH

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All you have to know about the last name WINCH

Last name frequency

WINCH : This last name is indexed 32,140 times on Geneanet!

Origin of last name

WINCH : 1: English: from Middle English winche ‘winch pulley’ (Old English wince) later meaning ‘well’ presumably because a winch would have been used to extract water from a well. The surname is probably a topographic name for someone who lived by a well. Compare Wink. This may also be a topographic name denoting someone who lived by a sharp bend in a river or valley from a transferred sense of winche ‘winch pulley’. This term and sense appears to be behind some placenames such as Wincham (Kent) and Winchbottom (Buckinghamshire).2: English: habitational name from East and West Winch (Norfolk). The placenames probably derive from Old English winn ‘pasture meadow’ + wīc ‘dwelling specialized farmstead’.3: English: perhaps also a nickname from a further transferred use of the Middle English word in sense 1 above for a lapwing (compare Middle English lapwink ‘lapwing’ Old English hlēapewince) or other bird known for its leaping and twisting flight.4: Perhaps also an Americanized form of German Wintsch or its variant Wüntsch (see Wuensch).

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