Surname Spotlight: Cruikshank

Cruikshank and Cruickshank are two spellings with one history. Read literally, Cruikshank points to “A dweller at, or near, the crooked projecting point of a hill”. Records show Cruikshank as one of the forms Cruickshank took over time. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them. Related forms: Crookshank.

The 2010 census count for Cruikshank in the United States was 1,409, good for rank 19,242. That puts it inside the top 25,000 US surnames.

Arms linked to Cruickshank and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to. For the full story, order the Cruikshank surname pack.