Trending
Roots & Branches
James Beidler
Last week's installment of "Roots & Branches" talked about some guides produced by the well-known professional German genealogy researcher Andrea Bentschneider, the principal of the German Genealogy Collective service.
This week I wanted to highlight another of these primers -- which she together calls the "German Genealogy Essentials Research Guides" -- that I found especially detailed and helpful.
This one is titled "German Surnames Explained: An Essential Introduction for Genealogists," and it's way more than just an introduction!
While I didn't particularly need to be told, Bentschneider herself explained the "skinny" on this guide on my Facebook author page (James M. Beidler): "The idea behind that guide was not so much to explain that the surname Schneider means Taylor. We rather want to show in that guide all the different local naming patterns and peculiarities as a way to possibly establish where ancestors came from. It is meant to understand the regional and historical context and to provide a tool that helps research the correct families in Germany, by understanding the meaning of some of the variations."
And the guide fulfills these goals very well.
It starts by examining the "study of names" called "onomastics" and the reason that it's important to genealogists (I like guides like this, that go back to the beginning and define the terms!).
Bentschneider then examines the beginning of surnames as what's called "bynames" -- a second name attached to someone personally rather than being passed down from one generation to another -- and how this eventually evolved (first in more populated urban areas and then into more rural ones) into fixed surnames ... at least in most parts of Germany (more on that later).
The guide then breaks down surnames into five categories (which Bentschneider points out sometimes overlap):
n Occupational names, which make up the largest category of surnames
n Residential names, derived from a farm or home's location
n Names of origin, based on where someone had lived previously (some of which are very specific and others more generalized)
n Patronyms, from a father's given name
· and descriptive names -- in German called evocatively Übernamen -- from a personality trait or physical characteristic
Bentschneider also covers the regional patronymic traditions in northern Germany, where the individuals had unfixed surnames that changed every generation based on the father's first name until the 1800s, and touches on the special cases of Jewish surnames.
She also has an excellent section on Genannte Namen, literally "known as," in which someone might carry two potential surnames, based on a variety of factors.
These include the several areas of Germany in which the so-called "farm names," in which someone who acquired a farm changed their surname to the name of that farm, as well as a couple of other circumstances.
To buy these guides or to learn more about the German Genealogy Collective and become a member, go to the URL: https://germangenealogycollective.com/
Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler).