Faulks

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Surname of Sebastian Faulks, the English novelist known for works such as Birdsong and Charlotte Gray
2. The family name of Sebastian Faulks, a British writer celebrated for historical fiction and the novel Birdsong
3. Refers to Sebastian Faulks, an English author of bestselling novels set in wartime and in the past

Etymology: "Faulks" is a surname, and it traces back to a medieval personal name. In Anglo-Norman, the name was "Faulques", and it belongs to the same family of words as "falcon", the bird of prey. The connection is about the name's ultimate source rather than any sense of the bird itself: a person who bore the name, or was associated with a falcon, could have given rise to a family that took it as a surname. Surnames of this kind were common in England after the Norman period, when French-speaking families with personal names like this became established. Over the centuries the spelling settled into "Faulks" in many family lines, while other branches kept variants. The result is a name that looks unrelated to the bird at first glance, yet shares its origin with one of the most familiar words for a hunting hawk.