Category talk:German surnames

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 "German surnames" to "German-language surnames" 2 List not exhaustive; perhaps "people mentioned in wikipedia with German surnames"

[edit] "German surnames" to "German-language surnames"

Maybe this category should be renamed : German language surnames to be more inclusive Travelbird 14:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. In fact, I believe that this should be done with other categories as well (Italian-language surnames, French-language surnames, etc), because in the 21st century, given the global migration of people (most especially since the 19th century), people often have surnames that originated in a certain language, but their nationality has little or nothing to do with those surname origins. Some examples:

• An Argentine, Brazilian, Mexican, or U.S. American with an Italian-language surname may be many generations removed from any ancestor who came from Italy, and may in fact have more ancestry of other kinds. Especially once marriage has reassigned surnames across any ethnicities. You could come from a long, long line of Irish people, but be a native-born Brazilian named Fellini because your mom married someone with an Italian-language surname whose ancestry was actually mostly Amerindian, but his mom married someone whose grandfather was from Italy.
• This has special significance for Ashkenazim. The ongoing separateness of German Jews from non-Jewish Germans over the centuries is a complex issue. For example, for a U.S.-American Ashkenazi named Goldberg, it makes more sense to say that she has a German-language surname, which seems to give a nod to the variability with which Ashkenazim were not allowed to be considered "German" or, sometimes, didn't want to be considered "German" anyway, because they weren't looking for their Jewish heritage to be lost via assimilation. Also, in the really long view, Germany is just a place where her family lived for a while. They didn't start out as "German", they never became "German" while they were there, and they don't live in Germany anymore. Their time in Germany gave them some souvenirs (such as their surname).

Anyway, I currently don't have sufficient time or interest to campaign on this topic (surname category renaming); I just wanted to say that we ought to do it. — ¾-10 17:33, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List not exhaustive; perhaps "people mentioned in wikipedia with German surnames"

This is by far not an exhaustive list of German surnames. Even if such a list would be available, it has no place in wikipedia. Propose renaming into something like people mentioned in wikipedia with German surnames.Northfox 12:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)