“The name Fiske is simply an older form of Fish. In Anglo-Saxon times the termination -sh was regularly sounded hard, like -sk. The breakfasting Engliscman of those days ate his fisc from a disc. The name is one of a large class of appellatives taken from the animal world, such as Herring, Salmon, Pike, Crabb etc. [...]
The earliest use of family names in England was about the beginning of the eleventh century. Long before that time, indeed, clan names were common, and such were always patronymics, eg, Fotherings, the descendants of Fother; Beormings, the descendants of Beorm; Icklings, the descendants of Ickel. At the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain (fifth and sixth centuries), it was customary for a clan to settle in a stockaded village by itself, and all English towns whose names end in -ham or -ton, preceded by ing-, were originally the abodes of single clans; eg Birmingham, home of the children of Beorm; Icklington, town of the children of Ickel. Besides these general clan names no others were in use except individual names, such as Alfred or Edith.
The use of family names, beginning in the eleventh century, increased slowly. It was not until the fifteenth century that such names became nearly universal, and also stationary. At first they were shifting in usage. Thus the same man might be called Henry Wilson because his father was named William (Wil-son), or Henry Fotheringham, because he lived at the village of Fotheringham, or Henry Draper, because of his occupation. [...] It appears, therefore, that in tracing back the Fiske geneology into the fourteenth century, we are approaching the time at which difficulty must arise from fluctuations of surnames. [...]
The reader may be interested in the coincidence that Laxfield, the name of the parish where our Fiske forefathers dwelt for at least three centuries, means ‘salmon field’. I think the name has been applied to the place for more than a thousand years, but I have no theory as to its origin. The name Stadhaugh is compounded of stead and haugh. The former means station or home, so that the word ‘homestead’ is a case of tautology. A haugh was a cleared field in the days when much of England was covered with virgin forest. Stadhaugh is thus equivalent to ‘home in a cleared field’.”
By John Fiske,
Lecturer at Harvard University
Taken from Chapter 1 of Fiske Family Papers by Henry ffiske, 1901.
“Fisk English (E Anglia): metonymic occupational name for a fisherman or fishseller, or nickname for someone supposedly resembling a fish in some way, from ON [Old Norse] fiskr fish (cogn. with OE [Old English] fisc).
Var.: Fiske.
Fisk is found in Norfolk as a personal name in Domesday Book, and the surname in this form is still restricted largely to that county.”
From A Dictionary of Surnames by Hanks & Hodges, Oxford University Press
Fish, Fysh, Fisk, Fiske: Ernis Fish (1202 Lincolnshire); Daniel Fisc (1208 Suffolk); Robert Fisk (1230 Nottinghamshire); Robert le Fysch (1297 Cornwall). OE fisc ‘fish’ a nickname. Fisc occurs in the Domesday Book for Norfolk and is probably ON fiskr ‘fish’ used as a byname.
From A Dictionary of English Surnames by Reaney & Wilson, Oxford University Press 1997
