Last name origins & meanings:
- English: topographic name for someone who lived beside a
stream, from northern Middle English bekke ‘stream’ (Old Norse
bekkr).
- English (of Norman origin): habitational name from
any of various places in northern France, for example Bec Hellouin in
Eure, named with Old Norman French bec ‘stream’, from the same
Old Norse root as in 1.
- English: probably a nickname for someone
with a prominent nose, from Middle English beke ‘beak (of a
bird)’ (Old French bec).
- English: metonymic occupational
name for a maker, seller, or user of mattocks or pickaxes, from Old
English becca. In some cases the name may represent a survival
of an Old English byname derived from this word.
- German and Jewish
(Ashkenazic): occupational name for a baker, a cognate of
Baker, from (older) South German beck, West Yiddish
bek. Some Jewish bearers of the name claim that it is an
acronym of Hebrew ben-kedoshim ‘son of martyrs’, i.e. a name
taken by one whose parents had been martyred for being Jews.
- North
German: topographic name for someone who lived by a stream, from Low
German Beke ‘stream’. Compare the High German form Bach
1.
- Scandinavian: habitational name for someone from a
farmstead named Bekk, Bæk, or Bäck, or a topographic name for
someone who lived by a stream.
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