Bakke
A surname with multiple possible roots, most likely from a Germanic personal name or a nickname for a bat.
The #9,257 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 87,787 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Bakke has more than one plausible origin in the older surname literature. One line of explanation connects it with Middle English bakke, meaning “bat,” making it a nickname surname. Another links it to an old Germanic personal name, recorded in older name books as Bacco, which would make it patronymic in origin. The sources also note forms such as Back, Bax, and Bakx, suggesting a family of related spellings that developed in different regions.
History
Older surname writers treated Bakke as part of a broader cluster of Back/Bax forms found in medieval records and later Dutch and Germanic name traditions. In some cases the name may have been influenced by spelling changes and local dialect forms rather than a single fixed origin. Because the evidence is mixed, modern reference works usually treat it cautiously rather than assigning one certain derivation.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One of the older explanations for the name ties it to the word for a bat — an example of how medieval nicknames could become hereditary surnames.
From the historical record
“Rolls long before its first appearance in literature. The nocturnal mammal called a " bat " is usually bakke in Middle English, and this is one origin of the name Back [Henry le Bak, Cor am Rege R. 1297] — " Moldewarpis and baches, var. rere-myis " (Wye. Is. ii. 20). The NED. dates the form bat from c. 1575. But it”
— Surnames