Fleck Family History

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): from Middle High German vlec(ke), German Fleck ‘patch spot’ or Yiddish flek of varied application. Bahlow suggests that this may be a metonymic occupational name for a user of patches in repairing shoes, clothes, or utensils, or a habitational name from a place called with this word.

In some parts of Germany, this was the term for a type of round flat loaf; the surname could therefore have arisen as a metonymic occupational name for a baker. In some cases, the Jewish name was probably ornamental.

English (Northumberland) and Scottish: nickname derived from flecked ‘pied spotted’, which is on record since 1377; the noun fleck ‘skin blemish: freckle’ is not recorded till 1596 but may well have existed earlier.

Alternatively, a metonymic occupational name from Middle English flek(e) ‘hurdle’ (Old Norse fleki), for a maker of hurdles.

English: perhaps a shortened variant of Flecknoe, from the place so named in Wolfhampcote, Warwickshire.