Family name origins & meanings
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : from Middle High German vlec(ke), German Fleck ‘patch’, ‘spot’ or Yiddish flek, of varied application. Bahlow suggests that this may be a metonymic occupational name for a user of patches in repairing shoes, clothes, or utensils, or a habitational name from a place named with this word. In some parts of Germany this was the term for a type of round, flat loaf; the surname could therefore have arisen as a metonymic occupational name for a baker. In some cases the Jewish name was probably ornamental.