The origin of Nimchuk

The Nimchuk surname originates from Ukraine, written Німчук in Ukrainian. The word comes from the Old Church Slavonic word нѣмьць, which means a German or at least someone who spoke German or, in ancient Proto-Slavic could also mean foreigner (ie. someone who didn’t speak the native slavic language). In modern Ukrainian the word is німець (pronounced nimetz in English) and still has a similar meaning.

This explains the first part of Nimchuk, but you may be wondering about what the -chuk part means. A word ending in chuk (or -чук in Ukrainian) had a patronymic designation, which means that it’s likely that the first Nimchuk of any family tree was the son of a German-speaking person who immigrated to Ukraine.

There are some variations of Nimchuk you may see like Nimchuck, Nymchuk, Nimchyk, Nemchuk or other such variations. These names all have the same origin but the difference is that when they moved to an English speaking country, they translated the original Ukrainian name, Німчук, slightly differently.

This way of denoting people of German origin was very common amound slavic countries, and other last names from different countries have similar origins. Some examples include the Russian name Nemchinov (Немчинов in Russian) and the the Polish last name Niemiec.