Drake
An old English surname most likely linked to a dragon or to the nickname for a drake, the male duck.
The #549 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 5,048 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname has two traditional explanations. One old authority, Lower, argued that it comes from an Old English word for a dragon, rather than from the bird, and noted that some families of Drake used dragon-like creatures in their arms. Other surname writers, including Bardsley and Harrison, treated it as a nickname from Middle English and Old French forms meaning a drake or wild duck.
History
The name is found in medieval English records, including forms such as le Drake. It became a stable hereditary surname in England and later spread widely in Britain and overseas. Because the name was applied both as a nickname and, in older scholarship, as a possible dragon-name, its precise origin may vary by family line.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Lower remarked that several Drake families used the wyvern, or two-legged dragon, in their coats of arms, which helped support his dragon-based explanation.
From the historical record
“tions of Drogo, the personal name. DRAKE. Not from the waterfowl, but from A-Sax. di'ctca (Latin r^ywctf,) a dragon. Le Dratj/un, the Anglo-Norman form, oc- curs in the H.R., but the nearest approach to this that I have seen in modern times is Drago, a name which existed at Ely about a century since. Several…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United KingdomNotable people named Drake
- Francis Drake (1540–1596)
- Frank Drake (1930–2022)
- Nick Drake (1948–1974)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.