Jacks
A patronymic surname meaning “son of Jack,” with Jack itself a familiar medieval form of John and sometimes James.
The #5,813 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 51,925 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Jacks is the genitive or possessive form of Jack, so it originally meant “Jack’s [son]” or more broadly “belonging to Jack.” In medieval England, Jack was a common familiar name for John, and in some traditions it was also linked with James through French Jacques. The surname therefore developed as a shortened patronymic, parallel to Jackson.
History
The name appears in English records as one of several surnames built from the popular given name Jack. Nineteenth-century surname writers treated it chiefly as an abbreviation of Jackson or as a direct patronymic from Jack. Because Jack was such a widespread everyday name, Jacks arose independently in more than one place and did not belong to a single family line.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older writers noted that Jacks and related forms could survive even where the fuller surname Jackson was more common, simply by dropping the ending -son.
From the historical record
“rally be called a Jackmau. JACKS. The genitive form of Jack, JACKSON. The son of John, or more proijerly of James (Jacques). See Jack. The Loud. Direct, has nearly 200 traders of this name, JACOB. JACOBS, The first occurrence of this baptismal name in England, is I think in Domesday. It is now very com- mon as a…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom