Talk:German family name etymology

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To user Cautious: Could you please provide a reference and some more info for your statement concerning the poet Hoffman? Who is he? (Please provide the full name.) Could you create an extra page for him or link an existing one, respectively?

[edit] Meyer

"Yet others adopted traditional German names in order to blend in, most famously Meyer." — *What's your source for this? I know of a small number of Jewish "Meyer" like names, but at least some of them come from other sources, I think -- for example, Louis B. Mayer was a Russian named Meir; Golda Meir's husband was a Meyerson... --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:28, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It was something i heard often and just took for granted; but now that you mention it, i realize that i actually don't have a particular source. So it may very well be wrong. I don't think that "Meir" is a Russian name, and i think it may be possible to dig up a few more examples, but i wouldn't want to do that. Why dig in other families' history if they themselves may not want to? I'm fine with just deleting this sentence – i certainly don't want Wikipedia to perpetuate old wives' tales. — Sebastian (talk) 19:03, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

Meier or Mayer or Mair or whatever, means a Beamter (civil servant) wich was the administrator of an Lord or Duke.
Later the "Meier" was an Farmer which have a huge farm (Meierhof). --84.175.83.109 09:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
See also: Tenant farmer--DanielMrakic 09:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested expansion

Expanding is good, but we should define a goal. Simply adding large numbers of family names will make the page unusable. There are tens of thousands of German family names. Any suggestions for what an expanded page might look like? --Chl 2 July 2005 14:43 (UTC)


One possibility is along linguistic lines, such as how names vary by region, much as placenames ending in -caster are found in the north of England, versus -chester in the south. For example, one of the variations of Meyer (typically German?) is Maier (typically Austrian?). I also understand that spelling variations such -man or -mann are also significant, I think dividing along Jewish/non-Jewish lines. Trishm 11:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

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