Brake
An English surname often linked to brushwood, thickets, or a brushy enclosure.
The #5,591 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 49,638 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Brake is usually explained from a topographic word meaning a thicket, brushwood, or small patch of bushes. In Lower’s account, the name may come from a word used for a small stand of bushes, while other 19th-century writers connect it with a Cymric/Welsh term for brushwood or a brake. The word also had other local meanings in English, so the surname may in some cases have arisen from a place-name or a feature of the landscape rather than from one single source word.
History
Lower explicitly places Brake among English surnames tied to places or landscape features, and cites counties such as Hampshire, Surrey, and Yorkshire. Norman-French records also show early forms like de Brae / de la Brache, suggesting that some later English bearers may descend from families using a continental or Anglo-Norman byname. Because the same spelling can reflect several similar words and places, the surname has more than one likely origin in the historical record.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Shakespeare uses the word in the phrase “through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar,” which helped keep the old sense of the word familiar to later readers.
From the historical record
“CO. York. BRAKE. A word of various significa- tions, as a large barrow, an enclosure for cattle, &c. ; but the name is probably de- rived from a hmlw according to Keunetfs definition — "a small plat or parcel of bushes growing by themselves." The Avord is familiar to Shakspereans : " Through bog, through bush…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom