Behind the Name
the etymology and history of surnames
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Subject: Re: Spyksma
Author: Menke   (Authenticated as menke)
Date: June 30, 2009 at 6:41:40 AM
Reply to: Re: Spyksma by Menke
A bit more thorough: this suffix originally meant "people of...", and it was frequently applied to farm buildings by the family living there at the time (as in "the Mellema building" for example"). Later on, it could happen that other families took over the name of that farm while living there. So this surname Spyksma can either be taken from a farm building or be related to Spyk directly, which doesn't seem to be a first name. Its correct spelling would be Spijk by all means, but due to anglicisation it turned into Spyk, as often happened with Dutch surnames in English speaking countries. There are several villages called Spijk, but I doubt they are related to it, since most of them are not near Friesland at all. However, there's a village called Spijk in the province of Groningen, near Delfzijl and since this whole region one time belonged to Friesland, it might be the origin, though this is just a theory of my own, nothing certain.

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