Maybe I should ask this under "Words from Yiddish," but I won't. In a newspaper recently I read an article about a lawyer named Glickman, and I got to wondering just what a Glickman originally did. The occupational origins of such names as Baker, Goldsmith, Butcher, Cooper, etc, are easy enough to ascertain, but Glick? Hmmmm... I can envision a mother asking her daughter, " Where have you been?" She replies, "Ira and I were down at the Grubnik's, and we were watching Mr. Grubnick glicking. Boy, what a nasty looking, worn out glicker he has!" The mother replies, "Oy! He still uses that thing? He let me see it when I was your age, and it was verschmutzen then! The late Steve Allen didn't help any when he did the spoof of "Jacques Brelle is Alive and Well," " Seymour Glick is Alive, but Sick." Did a worn out glick make him sick? I dunno...

Glick

Yiddish glik, German Glück 'fortune, luck'. (There is a Yiddish proverb: a mentsh on glik iz a toyter mentsh "A man without luck is a dead man.") The history of the adoption of family names amongst Russian Jews (Ashkenazi) is interesting. It basically happened around the turn of the 19th century that Imperial Russian bureaucrats decided that everybody needed family (inheritable) names. Before this Jews had used the older patronymic system, X son of Y, etc. Since every head of household got to choose one, many Russian Jewish names are fanciful Mandelbaum 'almond tree', Rosenzweig 'rose twig', Ginzburg (actually from a small Austrian town made famous by one of the most famous Jewish banking families in Russia, who were allowed to live outside the pale, and had adopted a family name long before it was mandated by the government.

So, short stroy, a glikman is a lucky man. As for Grubnick, it might be from the place-name Grobnik where a famous battle was fought.

English luck was borrowed from Low German luk, a shortened form of geluk, which is the source of modern German Glück and Yiddish גליק glik.

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As for Grubnick, it might be from the place-name Grobnik where a famous battle was fought.

I tossed that name in just for the old Mike Royko fans. Remember Slats Grubnik? Thanks, you two!

Oh, yes, I do remember Slats well. Here's a 1973 column about him. Link