Wickes

Recorded in a very wide range of spellings including Week, Weeke, Wick, Wike, Wix, Wyke, and patronymics Weekes, Weekson, Wickson, Wixon, and others, this is an English medieval surname of Roman (Latin) origins. Its relative popularity of some thirty spellings is because it is topographical from residence at a wic. This was a popular place name or suffix to a place name, and a loan word from the Latin wicus. It describes a settlement or farm, one usually associated with the dairy industry. In a few cases it may have described a farmer. There are a number of places called Wick, Wike, Wyke and Week in England and Scotland, as well as names such as Gatwick meaning the goat farm, or Droitwich, a military camp or similar from 'dryt' meaning a horse troop, and Wicken in Cambridgeshire, which describes 'several farms'. The earliest examples of the surname in published records includes Alueredus de Uuica of the county of Somerset in the pipe rolls of 1084; Goscelin del Wich of Worcestershire in 1184; and Jordan de la Wike of Gloucestershire in 1194. Where the suffix is an "s" it may denote a short form of the patronymic -son, or describe a person who was actually resident at a place rather than from it. Later recordings include Nicholas Wixon, a christening witness at St Botolphs Bishopgate in the city of London on April 21st 1577, and Symon Weeks of Devonshire. Aged sixteen, he was an early emigrant to the New World, leaving from London for St. Christophers in the Barbados Islands, in February 1634. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.