Plank

Recorded as Planche, Planque (French), Plank, Plancke, Planck, Planks, Plaunk, Plincke (English), and possibly others, this is a surname of French origins. It would seem to have first arrived in England with the famous Norman Invaders of 1066, perhaps the earliest recording being that of Jacobus de Planche, in the year 1307, William de la Plaunke in the close Rolls of the city of London, in 1373, and three centuries later, Elizabeth Plank who was christened at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, on August 11th 1678. The name returned from Franbce with the protestant Huguenots, who fled to England in the 17th and 18th centuries, and who for a time at least retained the French spelling. However such was aggresion between the two countries that by the year 1750, Planque as a spelling seems to have become extinct, and thereafter is only recorded in the English forms. This is not unusual, very few Huguenot spellings have survived, and this at least sounds almost the same as the original French. Their seems to be some disagreement over original meaning, which may be topographical for somebody who lived by a single Plain tree, or by a hidden place or a look out post. Four families of Planque were recorded in England about the time of Queen Anne (1702 - 1714), of which the first seems to have been headed by Pierre Planque recorded at La Patente Huguenot church in the city of London, on February 13th 1712.