The surname of HAAK is of two-fold origin. It is a Swedish ornamental name from HAGG (bird cherry). This is one of the surnames taken from the vocabulary of nature, and adopted more or less arbitrarily in the 19th century. The name was also applied to one who came from The HAGUE, the seat of government of the Netherlands, and capital of South Holland province. It developed as a settlement surrounding a 13th century hunting lodge and became the seat of the States General of the seven United Provinces in the 16th century. The name is also spelt HAGGAS, HAGGIS, HAGGBERG, HAGGBLAD, HAGGBLOM, HAGGLUND, HAGGMARK, HAGGQVIST and HAGGSTROM. During the 17th century surnames were brought to Britain, North America and southern Africa by French Huguenot exiles. The Huguenots were French Protestants, and in 1572 large numbers of them were massacred in Paris on the orders of Queen Catherine de'Medici. Many of the survivors sought refuge in England and elsewhere. Although the Edict of Nantes (1598) officially guaranteed religious toleration, persecution continued, and the Edict was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. It was then the trickle of emigration became a flood. Many migrated to England, while others joined groups of Dutch Protestants settling around the Cape of Good Hope. Others sailed across the Atlantic to establish themselves in North America. The name was found in Scotland at an early date, brought by settlers and there was used as a name for one who cut-down trees, and lived in a HAG-house, a woodcutters hut. Andre HAG was the prior of Pluscardine in the year 1454. 'Schir William HAG' was the chaplain of the chapel of Sanct Rok in Stirling in the year 1500. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God. However much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error. |
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