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* For both the English surname and given name, originally a nickname for someone who resembled a buck. * Also as an English topographic surname, from Middle English buk (modern beech). * As a German and Dutch surname, shortened from Burkhard, compare Burkhart. * As a north German and Danish surname, from Middle Low German bûk (“belly”), from Old Saxon būk, from Proto-West Germanic *būk, from Proto-Germanic *būkaz. Compare Bauch. * Also as a German and Dutch surname, variant of Bock. * Also as a German surname, variant of Puck. * As a Germanized Lower Sorbian surname, from buk (“beech”).

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ- Proto-Germanic *bukkaz Proto-Germanic *bukkô Proto-West Germanic *bukkō Old English bucca Middle English bukke English buck Inherited from Middle English bukke. Doublet of puck (“billy goat”). Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Native Americans and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748). The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (“sawhorse”) as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”). The sense of an object indicating someone’s turn then occurred in American English, possibly originating from the game poker, where a knife (typically with a hilt made from a stag horn) was used as a place-marker to signify whose turn it was to deal. The place-marker was commonly referred to as a buck, which reinforced the term “pass the buck” used in poker, and eventually a silver dollar was used in place of a knife, which also led to a dollar being referred to as a buck.

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ- Proto-Germanic *bukkaz Proto-Germanic *bukkô Proto-West Germanic *bukkō Old English bucca Middle English bukke English buck Inherited from Middle English bukke. Doublet of puck (“billy goat”). Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Native Americans and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748). The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (“sawhorse”) as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”). The sense of an object indicating someone’s turn then occurred in American English, possibly originating from the game poker, where a knife (typically with a hilt made from a stag horn) was used as a place-marker to signify whose turn it was to deal. The place-marker was commonly referred to as a buck, which reinforced the term “pass the buck” used in poker, and eventually a silver dollar was used in place of a knife, which also led to a dollar being referred to as a buck.

From dialectal buck ("to give in, yield"; also bug (“to bend”)), from Middle Low German bucken (“to bend”) or Middle Dutch bucken, bocken (“to bend”), ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *bukkōn (“to bend, bend repeatedly”), from Proto-Germanic *bukkōną (“to bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰugʰ-, *bʰewgʰ- (“to bend”) + Proto-Germanic *-(u)kōną. Cognate with Old Frisian bukkia (“to bend”). Influenced in some senses by buck “male goat” (see above). Sense “to meet, to encounter” is a semantic loan from Jamaican Creole buck. Compare bow and elbow.

See beech.

From Middle English bouken (“steep in lye”), ultimately related to the root of beech. Cognate with Middle High German büchen, Swedish byka, Danish byge and Low German būken.

From Middle English bouk (“belly, trunk, body, hull of a ship, fishtrap, container”), from Old English būc (“belly, bottle, jug, pitcher”), from Proto-West Germanic *būk, from Proto-Germanic *būkaz. Doublet of bucket.

From Hindi बकना (baknā, “babble, talk nonsense”).