Wick Family History
Wick Name Meaning
English: from Middle English wik(e) (Old English wīc) ‘building; enclosed piece of land; dependent farm where a certain kind of work is done’. In placenames the term is frequently combined with words associated with food production as in Butterwick ‘butter wick’ Chiswick ‘cheese wick’ Cowick ‘cow wick’ Hardwick ‘herd wick’ Gatwick ‘goat wick’ Shapwick ‘sheep wick’ Goswick ‘goose wick’ Berwick ‘barley wick’ Fishwick ‘fish wick’. The most common sense is ‘dairy farm’. The surname may be topographic or occupational denoting someone who lived or worked at a wick (compare Wicker ) or habitational denoting someone who lived at or came from a place called Wick (of which there are examples in Berkshire Gloucestershire Somerset Wiltshire and Worcestershire) Wyke (Devon Dorset Surrey Yorkshire) or Week (Cornwall Devon Hampshire Isle of Wight Somerset). German: from a medieval personal name Wicko a short form of any of various ancient Germanic personal names formed with the element wīg ‘battle war’. German: habitational name from Wick (Westphalia) or any of the places called Wieck or Wiek. Americanized form of Norwegian Vik . Scottish: habitational name from Wick (Caithness) derived from Old Norse vík ‘bay’.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022