Brick
A short surname that may be occupational or reduced from a place-name with “bridge” in it.
The #9,969 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 95,439 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Brick is most plausibly English in origin, but its exact source is not certain. In surname work it is sometimes treated as a shortened or altered form of a name containing the element for “bridge,” since older English spellings could shift and simplify in unexpected ways. It may also have been influenced by occupational names connected with brick-making, though the historical evidence for Brick specifically is thin.
History
The surname appears in English records, and later examples are found in Britain and North America. The 19th-century sources supplied here do not give a dedicated, confident explanation for Brick itself, but they do show related surname patterns where forms with -brig/-bridge can become Brick or Brickman. Because of that, the name is usually treated as a reduced or altered English surname rather than a straightforward dictionary word-name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same historical source tradition that discusses Brick also notes surname changes like Brigg becoming Brick, showing how flexible old spellings could be.
From the historical record
“SHOOBRICK. SHOOBRIDGE. SHU- BRICK. Evidently a local name. See Shoe. The final brick is a corruption of the A-Sax. hiff, a bridge. SHOOLBRED. A corruption of Sbul- bred in W. Sussex, formerly noted for its priory. SHOOSMITH. A maker of horse-shoes, a farrier. Let me remark here, the impro- priety of the common…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom