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The meaning of our name

~:§:~

For starters : a little bit of theory

1. the genesis of family names
   
   
   During the 4^th and 5^th century our forfathers had a call-name.
   Given the small community these people lived in, this call-name was sufficient to identify every individual unambiguously.
   These names had a litteral meaning, applicable to the namebearer, and the oldest form of these names was monosyllable, for example : Brecht (the bright), Bald (the strong)...
   
   In the 6^th and 7^th century the two-jointed names came about, for example Gerhard, Bernhard, Idesbald ...
   
   During the 8^th century, the original litteral meaning of the name as a characteristic of the person it referred to,was lost.
   Composed names emerged, formed by a part of the father's name and a part of the mother's name, for example : Gerlinde from Gerhard and Sieglinde.
   
   During the 10^th century, the names for men were often "bald" or "hard", and for women "linde" or "gende", in combination with the name of the clan which they belonged to.
   
   Shortly after the first millennium, christian names came in use.
   
   The rising of the cities, and the larger concentration of persons who lived together there, brought about the need of a nickname, in order to unambiguously identify and distinguish 2 persons with the same call-name.
   These nicknames could be derived from the name of their father, from a profession, from a dwelling-place, from a physical particularity or a psychological characteristic.
   
   When such a nickname was hereditarily passed on from a father to his children, it became a family name.
   The earliest family names originated in the complex urban societies of the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant.
   Around the year 1200 the hereditary family names were commonly in use.
   
   In the northern parts of the Low Countries, less densly populated, patronyms were used till the beginning of the 19^th century.
   In 1811 the French oppressor decided that evryone should have a family name.
   A lot of people thought that this rule would disappear sooner or later, together with the French, and chose a funny name.
   A clerk in the Amsterdam townhall wrote in a letter to his parents that on a quite regular basis, loud laughter could be heared in the office when some funny guy had chosen a ridiculous family name.
   These acceptances of names were punctually registered, and by the time that the French were driven out of Holland, the use of family names was well integrated in the society, and the system was continued.
   A lot of descendants of these jokers nowadays often are embarrassed when they have to say their family name.
   



2. The explanation of the meaning of family names
   
   
   When one tries to explain the meaning of a family name, one should not be tricked by its present form.
   A lot of family names during the ages have evolved phonetically or experienced linguistic changes.
   Because people didn't understand the meaning of some names, they were mutilated or reinterpreted.
   It is not always easy to discover the original form of a family name. Sometimes this requires intens genealogical research.



3. The different types of family names
   
   
   There are 4 basic types of family names :
   
   • family names who indicate a family relation
     
     
     • the patronymics, deducted from the first name of the father
     • the metronymics, deducted from the first name of the mother
     • family names who refer to other family relations
   
   
   • the nicknames
     
     
     • the family names who indicate a typical quality or characteristic
     • the family names based on a comparison
     • the nicknames linked to a profession
   
   
   • the profession-names
   
   
   • the family names deducted from a toponym, the name of a specific place.

The original form of our name

Our search begins with the name Verhoeke : this family name is an alternative notation of the family name Verhoken, which originated in the north of France in de second half of the 19^th century.
In the north of France, people didn't understand the meaning of the name Verhoken, and they reinterpreted the name as Verhoeke. The part of the name "hoken" was unknown, a "hoek" was clearly identifiable by everyone as a corner.

The family name Verhoken is a hypercorrect form of the name Verroken.
The cause of this change is the same as the one mentioned above : people did not understand the meaning of this name.
The scribe interpreted the name Verroken as Veroken, and "corrected" in this name the presumed not pronounced "h" by adding one.
Where one had the intention of correcting a mistake, one actually created one.
In linguistic theory, such a wrongly added "h" is called a hypercorrect "h".
As a comparable example the form "Verheecken" exists in relation to the name "Vereecken".

The name Verroken is a 16^th century contraction, a linguistic evolution, of the name Van der Roken.
At the end of the 16^th century the family name Van der Roken evolved into Verroken.
In Kerkhove in 1558, the rare form of Vaerrocke was registered.
A comparible linguistic evolution can be found in the words "elkander" and "malkander" who were contracted to "elkaer" and "mekaer"
In many families both forms of the family name were passed on to the next generations, for example Vander Plancken - Verplancken, Van Der Straeten - Verstraeten, ... in our family only the new form Verroken survived.

The name Van der Roken is a variation of the original form of our family name : van de roke.
The oldest form of our family name was as well in Gent in the period 1380-1430, as in Berchem in 1396, written as van de roke or vander Roecke, where the "oe" in vander Roecke has to be interpreted as the long [o:] vocal, just as the "ue" in Verschueren sounds as [y:] en the "ae" in Verstraeten has to be pronounced as [a:].

The explanation of the meaning of the family name van de roke

Our name begins with "van de", and therefore the name van de roke is without any doubt a name who refers to a name of a place, a toponym.
A person who had the name van de roke, was coming from a roke, just as somebody who was called "van de Kerkhove" was coming from or living nearby a graveyard, the family "Van der Schueren" lived near a barn and so on.
Here of course the question arises : what is a roke and where can the roke from which our ancestors derived their name be located?

In the dictionnaries of Medieval Flemish the word roke can't be found.
Moreover, dr Maurits Gysseling accumulated all the known texts in Medieval Flemish, older than 1300, in his famous "corpus Gysseling", and neather the word roke nor a family van de roke are there to be found.

Only when Erik Verroken studied the oldest documents passed before the eldermen of Ronse, at the end of the 13^th century, the word roke came up, and its meaning became clear...

Ronse is -and was- situated on the linguistic border between the Germanic and Roman languages.
Now this is the borderline between the Dutch and the French language, in those days the linguistic border was the partition between the Mediaval Flemish and the Picardian language.
The Picardian language was a Roman language with Gallic and Frank influences, and during the Middle ages this language was spoken between the northern-French region Picardie and the Belgian province of Hainaut.
In Cambier's book we can read that the Picardian language was activily spoken in Ronse at the end of the 13^th century, as well as Flemish of course.
In the 14^th and 15^th century the Picardian language was pushed aside by the French language.

The Picardian word roke means quarry, slag-heap or rocky hill.
The words "rokier" and "roketier" are related.
So, the name van de roke litterally means "he who is living next to the quarry", or "he who is coming from the rocky hill".

Since the word roke isn't a Flemish word, but a Picardian one, in combination with the fact that the name van de roke is nowhere to be found before the middle of the 14^th century, the question popped up whether this name would exist in the Picardian-spoken regions before 1300...
And indeed! In northern Hainaut there was a family de le roke, and our genealogical research has made clear that in the second half of the 14^th century, the name van de roke come into existance as a Flemish translation of the Picardian family name de le Roke, when members of the Tournay based family de le Roke emigrated to Flemish-speaking regions.

The preposition "de" and the feminine article "le" in the name de le Roke were translated in "van de".
The lemma roke was not translated, possibly because the word was known in the region where this translation took place, or maybe because it was absolutely not comprehended, but could perfectly be immitated phonetically.

The names de Rocque, Derocq, Derock, Delrocq and Delrock

Not all members of the de le Roke family moved to Flanders, and their history can be followed in Hainaut.
When in the 14^th century, French pushed aside the Picardian language, the Picardian name de le Roke evolved into De le Rocque, and later into de Rocque or Delrocq.

Presumably the names Derocq, Derock and Delrock are evolved forms of the original name de le Roke as well.

The names Van Roocke, Van Roecke and Van Rook

When at the end of the 16^th century, members of the de le Rocque family from Ellezelles in Hainaut emigrated to Leiden in southern Holland, their family name was translated in van der roecke, which later evolved into van Roocke.

The Van Roecke and Van Rook family names are probably variations of spelling or linguistic mutations of the name van Roocke.

Summary

A roke is a quarry, a rocky hill and the meaning of the name de le roke and all its derived names therefore is : "he who lives nearby the quarry".

On the webpage about the origin of our name we will try and locate this roke.

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