Then my maternal ancestors would qualify, if Dunkelberger referred to a specific dark mountain, or Max Bialystock of The Producers from a particular white mountain.
I worked with a Mr. Brabender, who’d endured all the teasing growing up as you’d expect, all because his family came over from the Brabant region
Also Walt Disney, from Isigny-sur-Mer Norman French. Although when Walt wrested central Florida for his kingdom he used straw-purchasers rather than sword and mace.
The difference is that there never was a state or region named Dunkelberg, while Bavaria, Hesse, Swabia, Prussia etc. all have been real independent political entities, states, kingdoms or duchies in the past.
Looking at the north-central portion of this 1871 unification map, it looks like Mecklenburg is another:
Further: Brandenburg was apparently an independent margraviate for over 600 years, into the early 19th century. I know of a few people with that surname.
Ludwig van Beethoven tried to use that to hack the Austrian legal system. He filed a case in aristocrats’ court (Landrechte) where he thought he could get a better deal. On the basis that the Flemish “van” was the same as an Austrian “von” in granting nobility, though it was nothing of the sort. The Austrian judge saw through that ploy and sent the case down to civil court.
For a long time, I thought designer Isaac Mizrahi’s surname meant “Egyptian”. I recently learned that Mizrahi actually means, roughly, “easterner, one from the east” in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzraim, is superfically similar but is spelled with a different letter where the “z” in Mizrahi is. @Alessan or @Babale can perhaps cofirm.
That’s right - “z” and “tz” are separate letters in Hebrew.
“Mizrahi” does in fact mean “Easterner”, and as a Ashkenazic Jewish last name usually means that the person had an ancestor from an “Oriental” community, meaning a Jewish community from the Muslim part of the world.
“MItzraim” is the Hebrew word for Egypt, from the same root as the Arabic “Misr”. An Egyptian would be called “Mitzri”.
That sound as a single letter exists in a number of languages. I think most, if not all, Slavic languages have it (in Polish, it’s c), Hungarian has it, also as c. Same with Albanian. German has it in z. The Baltic languages have it. Italian has it in a few words like pizza and mezzo. I don’t think it’s difficult for English speakers in intervocalic positions, but it may be somewhat awkward in initial positions like the word “tsar” or “tsunami.” I grew up speaking Polish, so it’s never been a problem to me, but from observation that seems to be where it’s tricky. But maybe it’s not even an issue there, though I swear I more often hear “Zar” and “Sunami” than with the initial “t.” (The the former being more often especially as it’s spelled as “czar” mostly these days, it seems.)