Slack

Etymology

Slack can come from Old English slaec, meaning “slack, remiss, idle, lazy,” so it may have started as a nickname for a slow or easygoing person. It can also be topographic, referring to a place-name element meaning a gap, hollow, pass, or sloping opening in higher ground, with related forms in Old Norse. Historical sources therefore treat it as having both a descriptive and a place-based sense.

History

The name is found in medieval English records, including Yorkshire Poll Tax material from the 14th century. Nineteenth-century surname writers also note a Scottish and northern English topographic use, and some examples may overlap with the variant form Slagg. In later English, the nickname sense seems to have been especially memorable, since writers explicitly recorded it as a label for an extremely lazy man.

Origin

Regions

Variant spellings

Fun fact

One 19th-century compiler quoted a Norfolk correspondent who said a man whose real surname was Harris was always called Slack because he was so lazy.

Related surnames