David Hook

(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.

English (southern): from Middle English hoke, Old English hōc ‘hook’, in any of a variety of senses: as a metonymic occupational name for someone who made and sold hooks as agricultural implements or employed them in his work; as a topographic name for someone who lived by a ‘hook’ of land, i.e. the bend of a river or the spur of a hill; or as a nickname (in part a survival of an Old English byname) for someone with a hunched back or a hooked nose. A similar ambiguity of interpretation presents itself in the case of Crook. In some cases the surname may be habitational from any of various places named Hook(e), from this word, as for example in Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey, Wiltshire, and Worcestershire.