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If your friend's family is from a Jewish background then it's likely to have the same meaning as Berkoff and Berkovitch. It would be from a diminutive form of the Yiddish name Ber, which means "bear" (the animal). Ber and its Hebrew equivalent, Dov, were used as substitute names for the biblical Issachar. I don't know why, and I don't think anyone else knows.
If it isn't Jewish then all I can say is that it's a surname based on the word berka, whatever that means.