Dear List Members, Below is my translation of the origin of the name Schröder, which appeared in Die Welt June 4, 2004.
German link: http://www.welt.de/data/2004/06/04/286464.html
Schröder: a Thousand varieties of wholemeal and grain - What does a name say?
by Hans Marcus Thomsen
Schröder is an occupational name - like so many German names. Thus more than 20 percent of all Germans have names such as Miller, Schmidt, Schneider and Fisherman. Schröders are not so numerous, but the name is nevertheless one of the 50 most frequent names in this country. While however it is clear to everybody that a Miller grinds, a Fisherman fishes and a Schneider tailors, no one knows what a Schröder is or what he does.
The job title Schröder has become extinct. In the yellow pages one will search for them in vain. The business of a Schröder evolved into many activities. This is expressed in the ambiguity of the word from which the name Schröder derives. Into every language there are words which have several meanings.
Example: a bank can be a piece of furniture for sitting, but also a financial institution what is, nevertheless, something else. The middle-high-German word "schrot" can signify slash or sting. It can be something cut-off (a chunk of wood or piece of metal), but also a wine cask or beer barrel.
Thus Schröder was, for example, a coin master who cut pieces off a rod of precious metal and checked the pieces before minting coins for the right weight (wholemeal) and the prescribed fineness (grain), in other words to verify that they were "of real wholemeal and grain".
Schröder could also be a wagon driver/operator who loaded and unloaded barrels with the help of a boom and ladder. This Schröder was probably often also "vierschrötig" meaning 4-square cut, in a figurative sense: coarse or crude.
However, most common use of the word Schröder was for a light weight part of a whole, in this case a piece of material, cut exactly from the bale and stitched together into garments: a tailor's business. About the 15th century when family names became established, a name for a tailor, Schröder, was gradually replaced by Schneider from south to the north. As Marburg was for a long time a Schneider's town, Kassel still long remained a Schröder's town. [a dialect shift]
According to figures the family name Schröder has lost out to the Schneiders. There are about 290,000 Schneiders but only about 136,000 Schröders today, in addition to some Schröters, Schroeders, Schroders, Schraders, Schrörs und Schroers.
Article appeared on the 4th June, 2004
Printed by © WELT.de 1995 - 2004
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Translated by Leon Follmer