2013-08-10 Unk is a Real Name

Unk is not Unknown

abbreviations

There is more than one misguided convention used by genealogists to indicate that a surname is unknown. In this small article, I focus on only one of those; use of the abbreviation Unk for Unknown.
The abbreviation Unk is just one of several abbreviations used to indicate that a surname - or given name - is unknown. This article focusses on the use of the Unk abbreviation used for unknown surnames for one simple reason: Unk is not unknown, Unk is a real name.

Unk is not unknown, Unk is a real name.

Unk is a real name

The Unk surname is very real. It occurs in my own database, as do the names Uunk, Uenk and Unck.
Unk isn't an extinct name, but a living one. There are people named Unk and, if they know about it, they probably take a dim view of genealogists abusing their name to mean Unknown.

I mostly research Dutch genealogy. The Unk name occurs in my database because it is a Dutch name.
It is easy to verify that Unk is a Dutch name. Genealogie Online has family trees, while WieWasWie has scans of original birth, marriage and death records.

The Dutch Family Names Bank has detailed information on all Dutch names. The database does not only tell us that there were 64 name bearers in 1947, and 78 in 2007, it also provides a name distribution map.

Dutch Family Name Bank: Unk

documentation

The Dutch Family Names Bank provides the following documentation for the Unk name:

Uneken, Unk: Patr. Dim. van de Friese VN Une, Unne, Oene, Onne, Onno. 1397 Oncke Snelgers; 1527 Ineke Oneken = Onken (NN). [WFZ]

WFZ is an abbreviation the Dutch Family Names Bank uses to refer to the Woordenboek van de familienamen in Zeeland (Dictionary of family names in Zeeland) by Frans Debrabandere (available as a free PDF download, link below). The lemma shown by the Dutch Family Names Bank is from that book.
What it says is that Unk and Uneken are patronymic diminutives of the Frisian given name Une, Unne, Oene, Onne and Onno.

Best Practice

Unk is a real name.
Respect that fact.

Do not use the abbreviation Unk as a surname.
Only use Unk as a surname when it actually is the surname.