Where does the name Denke come from?

I have recently discovered that there are at least two different etymological derivations of the name Denke

1. Denke is a form of the German verb Denken, meaning "To Think". My family was German, and this is where I believe my surname comes from.

2. Denke is Hungarian for little Dénes (Dénes is a Hungarian first name)

Below, I will give as much information as I can about the two derivations:

GERMAN:

The english word think comes from Middle English thenken, from Old English thencan; akin to Old High German denken to think, Latin tongEre to know. The word can be traced back to before the 12th century. The Englsh word "thanks" is closely related to "think". It is from the Middle English thank, from Old English thanc thought, gratitude; akin to Old High German dank gratitude, Latin tongEre to know. This word can also be traced back to before the 12th century.

The German verb Denken is conjugated as follows:

I think - Ich denke

You think - Sie denken

He thinks - Er denkt

She thinks - Sie denkt

We think - Wir denken

They think - Sie denken

Think! - Denken Sie! (formal imperative) or Denk! (informal)

As far as pronunciation goes, I should probably leave that up to you. I believe that the correct German pronunciation is 'den-k&, where the symbol \&\ is as a and u in abut and the symbol \e\ is as e in bet, however, my family pronounces it as 'den-kE, where the symbol \E\ is as ea in easy - as if it were a compound word made up of the words "den" and "key". I would not be at all surprised to learn that others pronounce it differently, judging by the many schoolyard chants of "dinky" that I experienced as a child.

There are many different variations on the name that appear to be related. Some of the ones I have discovered are listed here in order of their popularity in Germany and Austria (based on telephone and address directories):

*I looked at the entries for Denka, and almost without exception they have non-German first names. Most are slavic.

In order of popularity in the United States, they are:

Notice that "Denkes" seems to be a strictly German variant, while "Denka" seems to be an entirely U.S. variant. This logically makes sense to me, because German immigrants to the United States may have been faced with a dilemna in English speaking society - either spell your name so people pronounce it correctly, or spell it correctly and let it be pronounced incorrectly. My family opted for the incorrect pronunciation.

Not that I am not entirely certain that all of these spelling variants are related.Deneke and Denike are primarily Dutch surnames and are related to some other dutch surnames like Teneyck, that do not appear to have such an obvious connection. If anyone speaks Dutch, I would be curious about what the Dutch word for "think" is. I have run into a few cases where names like Deneke and Denike were incorrectly spelled Denke - the most recent example of this was when a popular national news program ran a story about a Brian Deneke, who was a "Punk" teenager in Texas who was murdered by a "Jock" who ran him over with his car. After the story ran, my website got a lot of hits from people looking up "Brian Denke". Since then, I have noticed that several websites have stories about Brian Deneke with his name misspelled as Denke - one uses another as a source, and then the error is repeated over and over.

Denk, the most common name, is the informal imperative form of the verb "Denken", most often used with a person you know, like a family member.

Interestingly, because "denke" is the first person singular form of the verb, it makes internet searches for Denkes in Germany rather difficult. Depending on the search engine (some refuse to list non-english pages at all), if you search for "Johann Denke", you will come up with a list of all pages where someone named Johann thought something. You can also get pages where one sentence ends with Johann and the next begins with some form of the word "Denken".

HUNGARIAN:

In our Hungarian, this kind of family name (coming from a nickname) was very common in the 1300s. The name, Dénes has other nickname forms, like Denike, Denko, Denkö, Denke. There is also the form Denk in Hungary, which can be the same name-family. The ending -ke may be Polish or Czech or Slovak as well.

From the 1200s till today most Denke families are living in south-west Hungary, in the region called Baranya (the largest city there is Pécs). It is believe that there are a few hundred Denkes in Hungary. They are not aware of any common origin, that they are "one" family. Some Denke families left the Baranya region to settle in other areas of Hungary due partly the re-reformation in the 1600s

If you have something to add to this page, please email me at alan@denke.org.