History

The Duckeck family has a long history in south Germany. My grandfather Johann Georg Duckeck from Laichingen was interested in genealogy and in the early thirties, when each family had to research his ancestors, he also did so. The new law was made by the Nazis, and the people had to prove that they had no jewish ancestors in the last three generations. But my grandfather used the possibilities of this new law, and with this official support, numerous clergymen of the area searched their church registers for the Duckeck family.

The first Duckeck we know of, was written Tuckeckg, and died 1672, 34 years after the Thirty Year's War (1618-1648) in the small village Bermaringen on the Schwäbische Alb (Swabian Jura).

We can only guess what happened, as the only existing documents from this time are church registers, and they only mentioned certain points in the Christian life, like marriage and death. Even the birth of a child was not mentioned, maybe because of the high child mortality at this times.

Many documents got lost during the Thirty Year's War, as many churches and town halls were destroyed. It is possible that Duckecks lived in South Germany before the war, but as so many people were relocated during the war it is also possible that a soldier, mercenary, or the blachsmith of an army, decided to stay here after the war. We know similar stories from World War II, when German captives decided to stay in Britain or France after they were released, expecially if they had found a spouse there. So if someone with a name like Duček would have stayed in Swabia, his name would have been transormed to something "easier" to say. And the priest, making the entry into the church register would have written down, what he heared.

The written name Duckeck changed over the time. Soon the T was replaced by a D, and the g at the end was omitted. Sometimes one or both c's were omitted. So the name was written Duckeck, Duckek, Dukeck, and Dukek during the centuries.

But it seems rather strange: sometimes the sons family name is different from the fathers or the brothers. The explanation is easy: at this time no kind of registry office existed. The name was never written. The first written document for most people from the countryside was the inscription at the army. And the guy who was ordered to write down the names was not always very good in writing. But if he made an mistake, there was no chance to change it later. The inscription was an official document.

So it happened several times - the name Duckeck is not common and not easy to understand - that the name was written wrong. Once this happened to the son and the grandson, so the grandsons name was again written like his grandfathers.