Frequency: (456)
(number of times this surname appears in a sample database of 88.7 million names, representing one third of the 1997 US population)
1. Scottish: apparently a nickname meaning ‘oak man’, from Scots aik ‘oak’ + man ‘man’.
2. Scottish: alternatively, perhaps a derivative of an Old English personal name Agemund.
3. Americanized spelling of Dutch Eyckman or Yckman (more commonly Eyckmeester), a 17th-century occupational name for someone whose job was to maintain standards, especially of the contents of wine casks, from Dutch ijken ‘calibrate’, ‘measure’, ‘gauge’.
See the Key to the Dictionary or consult the General Introduction for further explanation.
