Wick Family History

English: from Middle English wik(e) (Old English wīc) ‘building; enclosed piece of land; dependent farm where a certain kind of work is done’. In placenames, the term is frequently combined with words associated with food production as in Butterwick ‘butter wick’, Chiswick ‘cheese wick’, Cowick ‘cow wick’, Hardwick ‘herd wick’, Gatwick ‘goat wick’, Shapwick ‘sheep wick’, Goswick ‘goose wick’, Berwick ‘barley wick’, and Fishwick ‘fish wick’. The most common sense is ‘dairy farm’.

The surname may be topographic or occupational denoting someone who lived or worked at a wick (compare Wicker), or habitational denoting someone who lived at or came from a place called Wick (of which there are examples in Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire, and Worcestershire), Wyke (Devon, Dorset, Surrey, Yorkshire), or Week (Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Somerset).

German: from a medieval personal name Wicko, a short form of various ancient Germanic personal names formed with the element wīg ‘battle, war’. German: habitational name from Wick (Westphalia) or any of the places called Wieck or Wiek.

Americanized form of Norwegian Vik. Scottish: habitational name from Wick (Caithness), derived from Old Norse vík ‘bay’.