Hitchcock
A surname built from the nickname Hitch, an old short form of Richard, plus the diminutive -cock.
The #2,646 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 22,689 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hitchcock is generally explained as a nickname surname from Hitch, an old English pet form of Richard, with -cock added as a familiar or diminutive ending. In that sense, the name originally meant something like “little Hitch” or “son of Hitch,” rather than referring to a bird or any literal cock. Older surname writers also treated Hitchcock as a weakened or expanded form related to Hiscock and other Richard-based nicknames.
History
The name is recorded in English surname tradition alongside many other nickname-plus-"cock" forms such as Hancock and Jeffcock. It appears in historical English naming patterns especially where short forms of baptismal names were turned into hereditary surnames. The surname later spread beyond England through ordinary migration, and it is now best known internationally through the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.
Origin
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Fun fact
19th-century surname dictionaries often grouped Hitchcock with a whole family of “-cock” surnames formed from personal-name nicknames.
From the historical record
“HISCOCKS. See Isaac. HITCHCOCK. Hitch is an old " nurse- name" of Eicliard, and COCK is the ordinary diminutive. HITCHCOX. See Richard. HOB 159 HITCIIIN". A town in co. Hertford. Also a "nurse-name" of Ricliartl.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United KingdomNotable people named Hitchcock
- Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.