Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch : topographic name for someone living at the main farm in a district, from Dutch wijk ‘district’ + hof ‘farmstead’, ‘manor farm’ (see Hof).
- The name is first recorded in North America in 1687, when it was used as a secondary surname for Pieter Claesen (c.1619–94), who in 1655 had become superintendent of the Bowery and cattle of Peter Stuyvesant in New Amersfoort, NY, moving into the house in Brooklyn now known as the Pieter Claeson Wyckoff residence. The surname may have been taken with reference to this house or to some similarly named place in the Netherlands.