HOOK

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.