Cook


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The Old English coc, meaning cook, gives the occupational name of Cook (and also, with the same pronunciation, Coke and Cooke).  Cook in medieval times could also be a seller of cooked meats or a keeper of an eating house. 

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England.  Coc was recorded as a name as early as 950.  The name Ralph le Cook appeared in 1296.  A Coke family in Norfolk dates back to the 13th century.  The Cookes of Gidea Hall were a prominent family in Essex in Elizabethan times.  The Cookes of Bow Brickhill in Buckinghamshire became Quakers in the 1650's and for a time were persecuted for their beliefs.

The main surname spellings have been Cook and Cooke.  At first the main spelling was Cooke.  But by the time of the 1891 census, the Cookes were being outnumbered three to one by the Cooks.  The name Cooke, where it appeared, was more in the north.  The southeast then had become Cook territory.

Ireland.  Cook in Ireland could be an English or Scottish implant or an anglicization of an Irish name. Cookstown in county Tyrone took its name from the Protestant planter and church lawyer Alan Cooke who first laid claim to the place in 1609.  Cook in Ulster probably comes from the Scottish MacCook or MacCuagh.  Cook in Galway is an anglicized form of the Gaelic MacCug, or "son of Hugo." 

America.  Cookes and Cooks came to America, amongst the earliest being:
  • Aaron Cooke from Dorset who arrived on the Mary and John in 1630.   His son Nathaniel was one of the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut twenty years later.
  • Ellis Cook who sailed from England in 1640 and a few years later moved to Southampton out on Long Island.  He was one of the first settlers in what was then Dutch territory. 
Kochs started arriving from the Palatinate in Germany in the 1680's, mainly into Pennsylvania.  Many of them became Cooks.  The Fred Koch who founded Koch Industries in the 1920's was the son of a Dutch printer who had settled in Texas.

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John Cooke led the prosecution which led to the execution of Charles I and was himself executed when Charles II was restored.
Sir Edward Coke from Norfolk was the famous Lord Chief Justice whose writings on the English common law were the definitive legal text for the following 150 years.
Captain James Cook was the famous 18th century English explorer of the Pacific.
Thomas Cook started the Thomas Cook travel agency in the 1860's.
Alistair Cooke  was the British-born American journalist best known for his weekly radio address Letter from America.
Sam Cooke from Mississippi was with his hits in the 1960's one of the pioneers of soul.
Peter Cook was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960's.

Select Cooks Today
  • 111,000 in the UK (most numerous in Hertfordshire)
  • 98,000 in America (most numerous in Texas)
  • 70,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Canada)

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For other surnames check the companion selectsurname.com site where there are to be found the history and genealogy for more than 500 surnames.

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