My grandmother's family name is GERMAN. Her lineage has been traced to
baptism records from the Christ Lutheran Church, of Berks County, PA of
the 1740s. The GERMAN family are descendants of Pennsylvania Germans
who came from Germany. I am attempting to sort out the origin of the GERMAN
name. The word "German" has no meaning in German/English dictionaries. The
German word for German is "Deutsch." I would like to learn where the German
word for the people of Germany came from. I would also like to learn where in
Deutschland people with the name GERMAN came from. Any ideas or recommended
sources of information would be welcome. Thank you.
Wayne E. Phillips
Chester, VA.,
Hello,
If you go to the LDS website (www.familysearch.org), click on Search
for Ancestors and just put the name German in the Last Name box, choose
Germany for the country, don't enter anything else, click on search and you
will see where many of the German (or Gehrmann) people lived. Perhaps, if
you're lucky, you will find your own ancestors there.
Barbara
I don't know if anyone here can be helpful with this name. The German
pronounciation is simply german with a hard G like garden. The name
ocurs all over the place and the telephone book lists 17 Alexander
German to give you an idea. Many of the 677 occurrances in the phone
book are the English version of the name in companies etc. but that
still leaves lots of regular german folks around. Take a look
yourself at http://www.telefonbuch.de/NSAPI/Anfrage and click on
English.
German history goes back to the Roman version of the peoples who
lived there and which thereby slipped into the English language from
Germania and German. By itself it is not a German word but Germans
talk about the old GERMANEN just like anybody else.
Fred
4788 Corian Court
Naples, FL 34114
239-775-7838; 239-269-4781 (cell)
FredRump@earthlink.net
Hallo Listenteilnehmer von [FamNord],
ein Tipp von mir:
im "Stader Tageblatt" war Freitag eine Seite, in der diese Adresse stand:
dort k�nnt Ihr in Erfahrung bringen, welche Bedeutung der Familienname hat,
sofern er aufgelistet ist. Probiert es einfach.
Sch�nes Wochenende w�nscht Euch Renate
Wayne,
I have seen that name before, and if I remember correctly, I think one of the many publications on origins of 18th-century German immigrants may list them. The name in Germany was Germann or Gehrmann. I worked on a family of Gehrmann who came to Baltimore in the 1820's through 1840's (several brothers and cousins) for a client several years ago. They were from Hannover, but I can't remember the town right now. I believe "Gehrmann" means "spear carrier", but I place little faith in a broad "meaning of a name" until you trace the individual family back in their town of origin and find out their history. Family names have a way of making many twists and turns in their history (for example the recent post for "D�vell" which evolved from "D�genfeldt"!--which I think, by the way, might be a simple process of elision).
That's my $0.02 for you.
--Gary
Waynmargphillips@cs.com wrote: