A sour pickle is the last thing anyone would expect to be named after a
man, but at least one source claims that the word pickle derives from the
name of a William Beukel or Beukelz, a fourteenth-century Dutchman who
supposedly pickled the first fish, inventing the process by which we
shrink and sour our cucumbers. But this pickled herring theory may be a
red herring. All the big dictionaries follow the Oxford English
Dictionary’s lead in tracing pickle to the medieval Dutch word pekel,
whose origin is ultimately unknown. Beukel does seem very similar to pekel,
though.