Family name origins & meanings
- English (southwest) : occupational name for a digger of ditches or a builder of dikes, or a topographic name for someone who lived by a ditch or dike, from an agent derivative of Middle English diche, dike (see Dyke).
- English : regional name from an area of East Sussex, near Hellingly, called ‘the Dicker’ (hence also the hamlets of Upper and Lower Dicker), from Middle English dyker unit of ten (Latin decuria, from decem ‘ten’); 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 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.
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : variant of Dick 2, from an inflected form.
- North German : variant of Low German Dieker, a topographic or an occupational name for someone who lived or worked at a dike (see Dieck).
- Americanized spelling of French Decaire.