German Names

hannover-l
1

Hello Everyone,

I have noticed this phenonenon also...lol. A have one ancestor..who..I don't really know what name he went by...Anyways.

I did read somewhere that the Catholics..usually first given name was a Saint's name..for baptism, and the name used was usually the second given name, or middle name on a baptismal record.

Made sense to me..as in my Feldhaus line..just about every son was named Johan/Joannes in the Latin/German records in St. Louis..yet they went by the second name. As in Johan Heinrich, Johan Bernard..etc. Even in the case of females..as in my ancestor Margarethe Adelheid Tobben..she went by the name Adelheid~~though sometimes in the U.S. translated to Adalaide or Adelaide.

It seemed to me that often the name used matched the name of their baptismal sponsers..but not in all cases.

My evangelical LUTHERAN ancestors seem to have longer names. I don't know the purpose of this. I know in the case of my grandfather (born 1901) that he used his first given name as his everyday name..but signed most everything all the names..as in Edmund Carl Heinrich SAHS.

or Edmund C.H. Sahs..

Though I haven't really all that much experience in research..seems this is how it was done with my ancestors.

Barb

2

Family Group Sheet

3

I'm having a good laugh :slight_smile: because my grandfather was the only one in HIS
family with one name on the birth certificate instead of three or four ----
and his name is also "Rudolph!" However, his original was apparently
lost and he had to file a delayed record for himself when he was 59 and
anxious to get himself into the Social Security system! That was also
1941, so maybe he had an additional reason to want to prove he was born in
New Jersey and not in Germany! And he always used Henry for his middle
name, so I don't know why he didn't add that.
Maureen