Cheek
A surname that probably began as a nickname from an older short form related to Chick/Chicke, though some early writers also linked it to a place-name or to French/English words for “little.”
The #2,273 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 19,273 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The historical dictionaries do not give one fully secure explanation for Cheek, but several connect it with Chick, Chike, or similar short forms. Those in turn were often treated as nickname names, possibly from a word meaning “small” or as a pet form of a personal name such as Cissa/Chissa. One source also treats Cheek as a place-name surname in some cases, so the name may have multiple origins.
History
Nineteenth-century surname writers repeatedly cross-reference Cheek with Chick and related forms, suggesting that it was already being understood as a surname with several possible roots. The name appears in English records in medieval and later forms such as Chike, Cheke, and Cheek, and some bearers may descend from local or diminutive bynames rather than a single ancestral line. Because the evidence is mixed, the surname is best treated as a name with more than one historical source.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Early surname writers sometimes grouped Cheek with names like Chick and Chicken because they thought all of them could go back to a word for “small.”
From the historical record
“a township co. Chester. CHEEK. CIIEKE. See Chick. CHEER. CHEERS. Fr. c/je?-— like the English Dear. CHEEtSE. Ferguson ranks this with the A-Sax. Gissa, the Frisian Tsjisse, &c. Chese. XT T> CIIEESMAN. A maker of, or dealer In cheese. Le Cheseman, Le Chesemaker.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom