Hans = johann?

Lady_Bonita_USA · October 3, 2004, 5:15am

Question:

Is Hans the same as Johann for a man's christian name?

Kind Regards,

Bonita Hillmer

Falk_Liebezeit · October 4, 2004, 4:30am

Yes, it is

Greetings
Falk Liebezeit
Diepholz

Fred_Rump · October 4, 2004, 9:55pm

Question:

Is Hans the same as Johann for a man's christian name?

Yes. It is an abbreviation of sorts which became a whole
new name.

Fred

Kind Regards,

Bonita Hillmer
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Lady_Bonita_USA · October 5, 2004, 1:58am

Fred,

ok ... does that mean that I should or should not add 'Johann' as a name
variation when the given name is listed as 'Hans'? Most of these are in the
18th century or earlier .. in Germany (Prussia, Kingdom of Hanover, Possen,
etc.)

Bonita

Karlheinz_Steimel1 · October 5, 2004, 8:01pm

The name Hans was rarely used in the 18th century. Actually the name normally is
Johannes. Johann is the earliest simplification, Hannes was common somewhat
later, and Hans rarely was used before the 20th century. So Hans is the latest
Name variation of Johannes. Today these names exist in parallel. I have a 7 year
old grandson Johannes and my brother has a 6 year old grandson Johann.

Greetings from Cologne, the 2000 year old city on the river Rhine, where today
you find thousends of prsons by the names Johannes, Johann, Hannes and Hans.

Karlheinz Steimel

Lady Bonita (USA) schrieb:

Lady_Bonita_USA · October 6, 2004, 1:26am

Karlheinz,

Thank you so much for your explanation. I wonder now if the biography I
read was just trying to differ the elder individual they called 'Hans' from
a son 'Johann'. It does seem to always be the 'elder' with the name
Johann. It makes me wonder if is a variation of the English "Sr." and "Jr."
or "I", "II", and "III" ... or the use of "Mary", "Polly", "Minnie" to
differentiate between generations of individuals with the same given names.

Regards,

Bonita Hillmer

Karlheinz_Steimel1 · October 6, 2004, 12:42pm

Hi Bonita,

that may be the case in a certain given case, but there is no rule to it.
Usually you will find, that the given name is Johannes and the person is called
Hannes or Johann or Hans by family and/or friends, like a John (=Johannes) often
is called Jack, or William is called Bill.

Regards,

Karlheinz Steimel

Lady Bonita (USA) schrieb:

Lady_Bonita_USA · October 6, 2004, 1:47pm

I think people do this just to make us genealogist's pull our hair out. One
thing is that genealogists should be able to ward off dementia as active as
our minds have to be to keep everything straight.

Bonita

KROEGER | KRUSE | KUHLWEIN | LEHR | LUBBE | LUEBBE | LUEHRING | MACKENTHUN
MEYER | MORELOCK | MUELLER | NIEMANN | PUTTEN | RICHERS | RULEMAN | SCHMED
SCHMEDT | SCHMETT | SCHNEBELLI | SCHROEDER | SIEMS | STEEN | STEER |

WESTERMANN | WICHTENDAHL | WIEGREBE

Rod_Fleck · October 6, 2004, 3:16pm

Bonita -

My favorite in my line is the reliance upon middle names...something that in
two lines of the family I can trace back for like 5-7 generations. The
classic is the ancestor of mine from the Minden area - August Funk...

Spent years looking for him. Well in a bit of luck - I returned to one
source in America that noted that they had nothing about him in their church
records. The new archivist found an entry for a Johann August Funk of
Westphalia married....

So, a letter went off to the archives in Germany -- seem August's full name
was Johann Heinrich August Funk. So, I truly believe that it is human
nature for one generation to do things that causes a loss of sleep, hair and
patience in future generations!

Doing my part as well -

William "Rod" Fleck

Lady_Bonita_USA · October 6, 2004, 10:41pm

Rod:

That always threw me until I learned that the multiple given names were from
the multiple sponsors at baptism ... one name from each person. Actually,
but getting the details regarding the sponsors and where they lived, it gave
me a clue to look in another village ... and there was the whole family.

Bonita

KROEGER | KRUSE | KUHLWEIN | LEHR | LUBBE | LUEBBE | LUEHRING | MACKENTHUN
MEYER | MORELOCK | MUELLER | NIEMANN | PUTTEN | RICHERS | RULEMAN | SCHMED
SCHMEDT | SCHMETT | SCHNEBELLI | SCHROEDER | SIEMS | STEEN | STEER |

WESTERMANN | WICHTENDAHL | WIEGREBE

R_B_Stewart · October 7, 2004, 1:49am

Bonita and Rod,

Most of my families that had multiple names did not use the
godparents' names. On occasion, maybe they did. There are families where
every man's first name is Johann (Joannes, Joes, Johan) or Bernard, Heinrich
or whatever. Others where all the girls names start with Anna or Maria. My
people are all Catholic. Maybe that is more common with them, I wouldn't
know. I have found that the last name listed which is closest to the surname
is the one that was the name that they commonly used. It makes sorting it
out very difficult and sometimes impossible!

     It is also interesting to see how there are naming patterns in
families, such as:
     1st son, named after the father's father
     2nd son, named after the mother's father
     3rd son, named after the father
     1st daughter, named after the mother's mother
      2nd daughter, named after the father's mother
      3rd daughter, named after the mother
           and on and on.

Barbara

Karlheinz_Steimel1 · October 7, 2004, 11:03am

Hi Bonita and all, who contributed to the discussion,

there is no naming rule or pattern which covers all parts of Germany, or even
one part. You will find that certain patterns were followed by one family, and
others by another family, sometimes parishes followed certain patterns. But
there are two patterns which you will find freqently. One is the use of
grandparents names as explained by Barbara Stewart in her mail, and the other is
the use of the godparents' (or sponsor's) names, but sometimes a combination of
the two. In those days virtually every person was given two names, sometimes
three, seldom more.

You will also find, that certain traditional names are repeatedly used
throughout generations within one family. New names are added to a family by
using traditional names of the family of the bride, or when the number of
children exceeds the number of traditional names within a family, often also
through godparents from outside the family (usually godparents were the
grandparents (for the first child) or brothers and sisters of the parents).

But all this, while it mostly is the case, cannot be considered as rigid rules,
and many deviations are possible. One rule however was adhered to fairly
rigidly, at least in the Catholic environment: The names had to be Christian
names, usually of Saints, who were chosen as guardian as well as exampel to
follow.

Karlheinz Steimel

Lady Bonita (USA) schrieb: