German Heritage Links - Name Meanings

Metro Louisville - Jefferson County Kentucky Gen Web

German Name Meanings

The following is a portion of Marguerite Miller's letter to the site in praise of Walter Kömpel. If you're researching your German heritage, it might be worthwhile to send Walter an email. He may be able to help you. It never hurts to have a contact abroad. Marguerite can be found here.

"Walter is a wonderful person for help. We have been to Germany two times and both times we spent time with him and his family. We had a great time. He has put me in contact with a number of other people who were able to help me in my search. I have also been able to help one gentleman (he is writing a history of their village) of the villages called "Hettenhausen". One of my ancestors came from this Village and I had old letters written in the old German from a sister and brother that remained in Germany (letters from 1845 to 1860 are a real treasure). They told much about the crops and how bad times were there in the Village. We spent a wonderful evening with these old letters. It also helped me in my family lineage."

"The last thing I send from Walter was about names. I send it at the bottom of this message in case you want to put it up. I know he would be happy with his email up."

Marguerite

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The meaning of last names of German's. Many are common in Jefferson Co. Ky.

MUELLER, ZIEGLER, HÜFNER, RÜTTIGER, KÖMPEL, HEROK; GRÖSCHL; SEITNER, DREIFÜRST,
LANG; KURZ, ARNSBERG as well as OBERBACH, WERBERG and various ten of thousands of other names can be found in Germany.

A lot of last names were derived from the person`s profession, such as MÜLLER
(Miller), SCHREINER (Carpenter), BAUER (Farmer) and so on.

Others found their origin in the physical body shape such as LANG (Long), KURZ (Short) or MAGER (Skinny).

Also some people are named after our home-town mountains such as AUERSBERG, ARNSBERG, KREUZBERG, PILSTER and BEILSTEIN.

A while ago I was looking for small villages in the vicinity in a german
telephone CD. I typed the village/town name in (i. e. ALTENFELD; BIRX;
BREITENBACH; DETTER; FRANKENHEIM; GERSFELD*(ER); HETTENHAUSEN; KOTHEN; MOTTEN;
MUENCHAU; PLATZ; RIEDENBERG*(ER); ROSSBACH; SANDBERG; SCHILDECKER; SCHMALNAUER;
SCHMALWASSER; SPARBROD; THALU; VOLKERS; WEISSENBACH UND WERBERG*(ER)) under last name and was so surprised, that a lot of people in Germany have last names like villages/towns and mountains in our area. A few days later on I had the opportunity to take a closer look at a 6-CD telephone directory of the Northern America and was surprised again to find that in the US a lot of above mentioned last names are also found there.

*variations in parenthesis

by: Walter Kömpel, Am Küppel 14, D-97772 Wildflecken - Oberbach
Email: wkoempel@t-online.de

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