Winch Family History

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).

English: habitational name from East and West Winch (Norfolk). The placenames probably derive from Old English winn ‘pasture meadow’ + wīc ‘dwelling specialized farmstead’.

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.

Perhaps also an Americanized form of German Wintsch or its variant Wüntsch (see Wuensch).