(male) Biblical name, borne by the greatest of all the kings of Israel, whose history is recounted with great vividness in the first and second books of Samuel and elsewhere. As a boy he killed the giant Philistine Goliath with his slingshot. As king of Judah, and later of all Israel, he expanded the power of the Israelites and established the security of their kingdom. He was also noted as a poet, many of the Psalms being attributed to him. The Hebrew derivation of the name is uncertain; it is said by some to represent a nursery word meaning ‘darling’. It is a very popular Jewish name, but is almost equally common among Gentiles in the English-speaking world. It is particularly common in Wales and Scotland, having been borne by the patron saint of Wales (see Dewi) and by two medieval kings of Scotland.
Short form: Dave.
Pet forms: Davy, Davey, Davie (mainly Scottish); Dai.
Cognates: Irish: Dáibhídh. Scottish Gaelic: Dàibhidh. Welsh: Dafydd, Dewi. German, Dutch: David. French: David. Spanish: David. Italian: Davide. Russian: David. Polish: Dawid. Czech: David. Finnish: Taavi. Hungarian: Dávid.
1. English: topographic name for someone who lived by a hill with a sharp point, from Old English pīc ‘point’, ‘hill’, which was a relatively common place name element.
2. English: metonymic occupational name for a pike fisherman or nickname for a predatory individual, from Middle English pike.
3. English: metonymic occupational name for a user of a pointed tool for breaking up the earth, Middle English pike. Compare Pick.
4. English: metonymic occupational name for a medieval foot soldier who used a pike, a weapon consisting of a sharp pointed metal end on a long pole, Middle English pic (Old French pique, of Germanic origin).
5. English: nickname for a tall, thin person, from a transferred sense of one of the above.
6. English: from a Germanic personal name (derived from the root ‘sharp’, ‘pointed’), found in Middle English and Old French as Pic.
7. English: nickname from Old French pic ‘woodpecker’, Latin picus. Compare Pye and Speight.
8. Irish: in the south, of English origin; in Ulster a variant Anglicization of Gaelic Mac Péice (see McPeake).
9. Americanized spelling of German Peik, from Middle Low German pēk ‘sharp, pointed tool or weapon’. Compare 4 above or from a Germanic personal name (see 6 above).
FOREBEARS John Pike brought his family to Boston from England in 1635 and settled in Newbury, MA. His son Robert was a leading citizen and a vigorous defender of civil and religious liberty in colonial MA.
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![[Image: Color-coded map of the United States showing name distribution by state.]](/map/David.Pike.US.gif)
