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Origin / History of the Cock / Cox Name

This interesting surname has a number of possible origins.  Firstly, it may have originated as a nickname from the bird, the cock, deriving from the Olde English pre-7^th Century ‘cocc’, and applied to a young lad who strutted proudly like a cock.  The nickname may equally have referred to a natural leader, or an early riser, or a lusty or aggressive individual.  It may similarly have derived from the Olde English personal names ‘Cocc’ or ‘Cocca’, found in placenames, although not on independent record.  But as ‘cock’ became a common term for a boy, it may also have been used affectionately as a personal name.  The third possibility is that it may be of topographical origin for a ‘dweller by the hill’, deriving from the Olde English ‘cocc’ meaning haycock, heap or hillock.  In London it probably originated from the sign of a house or inn.  The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Aluuinus Coc, in 1086, in the Domesday Book of Cambridgeshire.  While one William le Cock, appears in the Staffordshire Forest Pleas in 1271; a Hugh ate Cocke, is noted in the Subsidy Rolls of London in 1319, and in 1556 an Alicea Cox married Burkrave Westdrop at St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, London.  In the modern idiom the surname has many variant spellings including Cock, Cocke, Cocks, and Cox.    

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