What's in a Name?

In response to the question in the title to this post: more than I thought.

Last week I emailed a professor here at BYU about doing an internship with him transcribing interviews with World War II veterans (awesome, right??). He replied and gave me the information, but at the end of the email wrote, "Interesting surname. It's not showing up in my Oxford Book of Surnames, so I'll have to look it up on Google." A few minutes later he emailed me again and said, "It's Hungarian; any idea what it means? I didn't look far enough into any of the sites to find out."

When the professor asked me that question, I had to stop and think: What in the world does my last name mean anyway? Why haven't I found out before now?? Therefore, I turned to the fountain of much knowledge in order to find out: Google.

 According to the Dictionary of American Family Names via Ancestry.com, "Szuch" is "the Polish spelling of the German Schuh 'shoe,' a metonymic occupational name for a shoemaker." Interesting. However, I did some more digging, because I heard that our surname was originally Szucs when it came over from Hungary, and the entry from the same source for that one reads: "Hungarian (Szücs): occupational name from sz{u’’}cs ‘furrier’."

I have this sudden urge to do family history...