Origin and popularity of the name BUCK

Origin

Buck : 1: English: nickname from Middle English buc(ke) ‘male goat’ (Old English bucca) or a ‘male deer’ (Old English bucc). The goat was popularly associated with lecherous behaviour and the deer with timidity and speed. The surname may also be a shortened form of longer occupational names for example Roger le Bucmanger' ‘dealer in bucks or venison’ (Warwickshire 1221) or Walter Bucswayn perhaps ‘goatherd’ (Somerset 1327).2: English: topographic name for someone who lived near a prominent beech tree such as Peter atte Buk (Suffolk 1327) from Middle English buk ‘beech’ (from Old English bōc).3: German and Dutch (Limburg): from a personal name a short form of Burkhard (see Burkhart).4: North German and Danish: nickname for a fat man from Middle Low German būk ‘belly’. Compare Bauch.5: German and Dutch (Limburg): variant of Bock.6: German: variant of Puck in the sense ‘defiant spiteful’ or ‘stubborn’.7: German: topographic name from the field name Buck ‘hill’.8: Germanized form of Sorbian Buk: topographic name from buk ‘beech-tree’.

Bucktrout : from Middle English bukke ‘male of the fallow deer’ + a word trout perhaps related to Old French trout (a cry used to urge on hunting dogs) or to the verb troat trout ‘(of the fallow buck) to bellow at rutting-time’. Compare the definition in Cotgrave's Dictionary of French and English Tongues (1611): ‘Réer Rere to bellow as a Stag to trout as a Buck.’ However this is the earliest known use of the verb and there is no evidence for its use as a noun. Bardsley explains it as a compound of Middle English bukke ‘male (of the fallow deer)’ + trout ‘trout’ denoting the male of the fish but this seems a strange coinage and is unconvincing.

Buskin : 1: from Buskin in Devon or topographic for someone who lived ‘(by the) bushes’ from the dative plural *busken of Middle English *busk ‘bush’ (borrowed from Old Scandinavian buskr). Some examples may belong under (2). 2: from Middle English bukke-skin skin of a buck used particularly of buckskin breeches used to denote a maker of breeches or for a worker in buckskin or leather. Richard de Gravele called Bokskyn was an apprentice of Walter Polyt fuyster (‘saddletree maker’; see Fewster">Fewster) 1311 in London Letter Books D.

Lyga : Polish: probably from a derivative of the dialect verb ligać ‘to buck to kick’.

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Last name frequency

Geographic distribution of the 104,317 individuals with the name BUCK on Geneanet.

This last name in the family trees

See below the Geneanet members' family trees which contain the last name BUCK