Storch

English

Etymology

Borrowed from German Storch (“stork”).

Proper noun

Storch (plural Storchs)

1. A surname from German.
   • 1947 June 1, “24 FROM THIS AREA IN MARYLAND DEAD; Union City Woman Was Flying to Funeral -- North Bergen Couple on First Air Trip”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 25 December 2025:

     Samuel Storch, 55, lived in Miami and commuted by air to New York to operate two metalcraft factories with other members of his family.

Statistics

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Storch is the 12581^st most common surname in the United States, belonging to 2461 individuals. Storch is most common among White (94.51%) individuals.

Further reading

• Hanks, Patrick, editor (2003), “Storch”, in Dictionary of American Family Names, volume 3, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN.

Anagrams

• schort

German

Alternative forms

• Stork (dialectal, otherwise obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle High German storch, storc, from Old High German storah, *storc(h), from Proto-West Germanic *stork, from Proto-Germanic *sturkaz.

Cognate to dialectal Dutch stork, English stork, Swedish stork. The expected German form is also Stork, which was indeed in wide use, but has not become standardized. The shifted variant Storch is probably due to the use of epenthetic vowels in Old High German, by which the uninflected stem storah alternated with inflected storc-. Such variation was generally levelled in favour of the inflected stem, but this was an apparent exception. Compare for the regular development Old High German starah alongside starc(h), whence Middle High German starc and modern stark. Alternatively, Storch could be an Upper German relict form (with [rx] from [rkx]), but the regional distribution does not seem to confirm this.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃtɔrç/, [ʃtɔʁç], [ʃtɔɐ̯ç], [ʃtɔːç]

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

Noun

Storch m (strong, genitive Storches or Storchs, plural Störche, diminutive Störchlein n or Störchelchen n, feminine Störchin)

1. stork (bird)

   Synonym: Adebar m (dialectal or poetic)

Declension

Declension of Storch [masculine, strong]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	ein	der	Storch	die	Störche
genitive	eines	des	Storches, Storchs	der	Störche
dative	einem	dem	Storch, Storche1	den	Störchen
accusative	einen	den	Storch	die	Störche

¹Now rare, see notes.

Derived terms

• Pfeilstorch
• Schwarzstorch
• Weißstorch

Further reading

• “Storch” in Duden online
• “Storch”, in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache‎^[2] (in German)

Luxembourgish

Alternative forms

• Stuerk (dated)

Etymology

From German Storch, widely displacing the native form above.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ʃtoχɕ]

Noun

Storch m (plural Storchen)

1. stork