Brach Family History

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): topographic name from Middle High German brache ‘fallow land’, ‘pastureland’, originally ‘newly plowed land’. Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Barach. English: topographic name from Middle English breche, Old English br?c ‘newly cultivated land’ (a derivative of brecan ‘to break’, i.e. ‘land broken by the plow’), or a habitational name from any of the places named with this element, as for example Brache in Luton, Bedfordshire, and Breach in Maulden, Bedfordshire.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press