Hi everyone,
I am wondering if there is a German surname dictionary out there,
preferably one from Germany. The English ones I have looked at do not
have much to offer on my surname - Laker - probably because there is
an English form of Laker as well. I have found the surname in its
original German form as simply "Lake," which was the name of the
family's farm or cottage in Angelbeck as early as 1473. I know "lake"
today means brine or pickle, but that is in High German. My ancestors
would have spoken Low German (actually, they would have spoken Middle
Low German). Does anyone have a suggestion as to what this word could
have meant, or is there someone off-list I could contact? It has
always bothered me that we have lost the meaning of this name. I'd be
happy to hear ANY suggestions.
Thanks,
Andrew Laker
Andrew,
The Dictionary of German Names by Bahlow, and translated into English by Gentry, says that "Lakeband" is a L. German name meaning a bedsheet maker. Also "Lakenmaker" is low German name for a clothmaker. Perhaps your surname is a variant.
A book called Platt Duutsch:Low German: A Brief History of the People and Language might help. It is written by Robert Lee Stockman.
Good luck,
Nicole Wedemeyer Miller
I would not spend too much time on analyzing a name. It is after all,
what someone else used to describe just one of your thousands of other
ancestral lines. What difference does it really make. It's just a word
which has probably gone through many iterations to become Laker. I
once saw a book where a German Schuhmacher who had come to Germantown
back in the early days of America and his descendants had around 150
different versions of this name 300 years later. Some you'd never
identify as coming from the original.
Just for reference sake a Laken is a bedsheet and this may well point
to the original use of the name - clothmaker.
Fred
Thanks Fred for "Laken" - that's a possibility that I had not
considered. But I disagree that a name is just a word. I know it might
be fruitless studying the origins of a surname, but I still think it's
very interesting and important. Some of us aren't lucky enough to have
a name that "makes sense" like Schuhmacher or Cooper. And while the
initial bearer of my surname is only one of thousands and thousands in
my genetic makeup, the one thing I have from him that I don't have
from the others is his name. I see it as a gift of sorts - something
that I carry with me every day and reminds me where I came from.
Everyone eventually runs into a dead end in their heritage, be it the
end of the church records or a fire at a courthouse. After that, all
that's left is the name. But because surnames took shape in my
ancestors' part of Germany in the 15th century, I think what I've
found in 1473 - "Lake" - must be pretty close to its original form. It
did have a meaning at one time, and re-discovering its meaning is a
way to honor my family's history.
Andrew
That's the beauty in genealogy. We can take and chose that which
interests us most. It is after all, just a hobby. I didn't know one of
your Lake ancestors goes back to 1473. Most of us can't go back that
far unless we have nobility in our lines. If the name existed back
then, my suspicion would be that it was a place of some sort.
Occupations and meanings came later. Most people early on just had
given names and were further Id'd by their location. So if Lake
existed in the 15th century there must have been a place like that.
You want to know why that place had that name, right? If your guy
lived in a city as a Bürger, he might have already had a surname but
in the country (and most people lived off the land) names did not get
started the same way. Everybody who lived somewhere got to be named by
that place and genetics had nothing to do with naming.
Anyway, have fun with your research.
Fred