Seeking

Recorded in many forms including Seak, Seek, Seakes, Seeks, Seakin, Seaking, Seakings, Seeking and Seekings, this is an English surname. According to the famous Victorian etymologist Canon Charles Bardsley, it is of ancient pre 7th century origins, and derives from "Segin", a personal or baptismal name of those times well before the advent of surnames from about the 12th century. If so it probably originates as a dialectal diminutive of the name "Saega" meaning sea-spear, and also found in the modern surname of Sagar. The earliest known recording is probably that of Richard Segin, recorded in the Hundred Rolls of the county of Cambridge in 1273, and it is said that in Cambridge the name is still well recorded. However it is in the diocese of Greater London since pre Elizabethan times that the surname seems to be best recorded, and then in the myriad of spellings as shown above. These include examples such as Gyles Seeke, who was christened at St. Margarets, Westminster, on September 1st 1549 in the reign of King Edward V1, (1547 - 1554) known as "The Boy King", Frances Seakin, who married Theophilia Miles at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, on November 22nd 1641, and Henry Seeking, who was christened at St Mary-le-Bone, on January 24th 1859.