Given name & surname
Lock
“man of the forest”·“from the fortress”
Lock is a variant of Locke. Interpretations include “man of the forest” and “from the fortress”. These belong to different or overlapping naming contexts.
Meaning & origin
What it means
Lock is a variant of Locke. Interpretations include “man of the forest” and “from the fortress”. These belong to different or overlapping naming contexts.
Explained through its name family
Where it comes from
Lock is a variant of Locke. Locke has been associated with English and German naming traditions.
Explained through its name family
How it developed
From Middle English loke, from Old English loca (“enclosure”), from Middle English locke.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1915. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Lock through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 21
- 21 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1915
- 6 babies
- 2025
- 5
- #13,151 for boys
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
In 2025, this name appeared in 5 U.S. birth records for boys, ranking No. 13,151 among boys’ names. The recent annual counts are too incomplete to establish a ten-year comparison. Its largest published annual count for boys was 6 in 1915. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 6,817 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Lock’s family of names
Lock has a related form in Locke. In English usage, Lock as a surname has a related form in LOCKS.
The ring: nicknames and forms.
Nicknames & forms 2
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Similar names
If you love Lock, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.
Eleck
“resembling a star”
>99% boys
Holmes
“from the river island”
>99% boys
Boswell
“from the spring near the forest”
>99% boys
Woodruff
“a woman of the forest” · “a man of the forest”
>99% boys
Mansfield
“from the field near the small river”
>99% boys
Harwood
“from the hare's forest”
>99% boys
Reo
“woman of the river” · “from the river”
>99% boys
Oakey
“from the oak-tree grove”
>99% boys