Family name origins & meanings
- English (mainly East Anglia) : metonymic occupational name for someone who dealt in weights and measures, for example a grain factor, from Middle English pekke ‘peck’ (an old measure of dry goods equivalent to eight quarts or a quarter of a bushel).
- English : variant of Peak 1.
- Irish : variant of Peak 2.
- South German : variant of Beck.
- North German and Dutch : metonymic occupational name for someone who prepared or sold pitch, from Middle Low German pek, Middle Dutch pec, pic.
- Dutch : from Middle Dutch pec, pick ‘desperate straits’, hence a nickname for a person in difficult circumstances or perhaps for someone with a gloomy disposition.