About the name Finck

Finck is a German name. The English version of it is Finch. Its etymology ultimately leads back to the Greek word phoinix, for phoenix. There is in the Rhineland a town, Finkenbach (translated loosely as fountain or stream of Fink), which is not far from the village where my own Finck ancestors lived before they came here to America. It is a few miles east of the area of Worms and Frankfurt au Main.

The first Fin[c]ks in America, so far as I can tell, came here in 1708. They were protestant refugees from the Thirty Years' War conducted against Christian Germany by the tyrannical Romish Church. In my possession is a copy of a book telling much of their story. It is titled The BOOK of NAMES Especially Relating to THE EARLY PALATINES And the First Settlers in the Mohawk Valley. It was "compiled and arranged by Lou. D. MacWethy" and published by The Enterprise and News, St. Johnsville, NY, 1933. Parts of the story in the article in this section on Revolutionary War Major Andrew Finck were taken from this book.

Evidently the name was spelled alternately both Finck and Fink ever since the arrival of these first Rhenish Germans. Unfortunately, as they have of many German names, many families of the jews have adopted the name. My grandfather, John William Finck, used to like to say to me when I was a boy that the "c" stood for Christian, since most of the jewish immigrants usually spelled the name without it.  However it is evident from the Book of Names that many true Germans also omitted the "c". The jewish names Finkel and Finkelstein have an entirely different etymology - from Yiddish words - with no relation to the name Finck.

More information on the German name Finck will be added to this article as I get time.

Thank you,

William Finck

http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/finck.html