Straker Family History
Straker Name Meaning
English:: occupational name from Middle English straker streker unrecorded derivatives of northern Middle English straken (Old English strācian) ‘to stroke or rub (something) to smear (something with a substance)’ and Middle English streken (Old Norse strjúka) ‘to stroke make smooth spread or smear (a substance) evenly’. In some instances straker streker may have denoted a waxer of shoe-leather or a sharpener of knives. In other cases a straker or streker may have been a polisher of goods made of wood metal or other materials or he may have been an official corn measurer who used a flat stick or strike to level off the quantity of corn he was measuring. See also the etymologically related Striker and Stroker which were probably to some extent synonymous and interchangeable with Straker. perhaps an occupational name for someone who made iron strakes in a smithy or for someone who used strakes to make wheels or plowshares. This would be a plausible though unrecorded derivative of Middle English strake (Old English stracca) ‘band strip strake’ most often used to denote the strips of iron that formed the rim of a cartwheel or that fastened a plowshare. Middle English strake also denoted a wooden plank including the planking on a ship's hull so the surname could also have been given to someone who made planks or who built ships. However there is no contextual evidence to confirm either of these possibilities.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022