Explore the Family Name Dicker

The meaning of Dicker

1. English: occupational name for a digger of ditches or a builder of dikes, from Middle English dicher, diker ‘digger of ditches or dykes’, or a topographic name for someone who lived by a ditch or dike (such as a defensive ditch round a town), from Middle English dik, deke (Old English dīc) ‘ditch’ + -er. It was synonymous with Middle English atte Dike (see Dyke), and with Ditcher and Dickman. Topographical surnames in -er are characteristic of southern England. 2. English: habitational name from The Dicker, the name of a common in Arlington, Chiddingly, and Hellingly in Sussex, from Middle English dyker, a unit of ten (from Latin decuria, from decem ‘ten’), though the reason for the place being so named is not clear. It has been suggested that the reference is to a bundle of iron rods, in which sense dicras appears in the Domesday Book. Such a bundle could have been the rent for property in this iron-working area. Surname forms such as atte dicker occur in the surrounding region in the 13th and 14th centuries. 3. German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Dick 3, from an inflected form. 4. German: variant of Dieker, a topographic or an occupational name for someone who lived or worked at a dike. 5. Dutch: from the personal name Dickert, or a vowel variant of Decker.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.