Your surname: 3 non-specific questions (maybe more)

In My Humble Opinion
141

  1. German. The meaning translates as “a type of farmer who works with teams of horses” - perhaps “Plowjockey” would serve as a fairly apt anglicized version of our last name.

  2. My great-grandfather came to this country in 1859, and I believe he was the first of that name to emigrate. I do have records of several other young men with the same name, all brothers, who also came over around the same time, although we have not yet established if our family is related to those brothers. So that makes it four generations in our line (the name in our line is dying out with me) but probably 6 or 7 among the descendants of the other line of brothers. There is a possibility that one cousin of mine (my father’s brother’s son) might have had one or more sons before he died, but he was adopted so I’m not sure if that counts in this sort of survey.

  3. Our name is rare even in Germany, from what I can determine, and it does not appear anywhere on the list. Everyone I have been able to find of our name in this country is related to me (that would be only my father at this point) or to that other group of immigrant brothers. One day I hope to go to Germany to investigate further.

Roddy

142

  1. Irish, though I’ve read something that theorized that the name was originally Scottish in origin

  2. I’m in the 6th generation here, though it wasn’t until my great-grandfather that one of my direct ancestors was born in the US.

  3. Past 11,000

My great-grandmother (all maternal line) just turned 90 this year. It would be nice if I could have a child while she was still alive, but I’m not going to get pregnant solely for that reason.

143

  1. My last name is English

  2. My last name comes my Great-X grandfather who arrived at the First Colony at Jamestown about 1610. That makes about 20 generations. I argue that is about enough to make me a “Native American”

  3. It is about 700 on the list

144
  1. German. Southern German, I believe, although the most known people with my name are from Estonia.
  2. I don’t know the generational count, but my paternal ancestors came in the early to mid 1800’s with the other Lutheran Germans.
  3. Number 84,035. The map search shows a very small cluster around Iowa.

(My mother’s side has a record of an ancestor dying in Virginia in 1733 by the name of Jennings.)

145

My maiden name is:

  1. English/Irish
  2. Not sure, but it’s pretty damn old, widespread, and pretty common. Likely it’s been around in this country since the 1600-1700s.
  3. Within the top 200

My mother’s maiden name is:

  1. Irish
  2. Not sure. Probably quite a few. My own family only came over a couple generations back, but there’s surely a couple hundred years come before us. It’s O’Malley, ferchrissake. We’re a pretty big family.
  3. And yet… only in the top 3000.

My married name is:

  1. Greek or something. Maybe. Depends on who you ask.
  2. See my maiden name, and multiply by 18.
  3. It’s in the top 12. Namely, 11.
146

  1. Maiden name: Chechoslovakia
    Married name: Sweden or something, not sure

  2. Maiden name: early 1800’s
    Maiden name: 1900’s

  3. Maiden name: Does not appear on list.
    Married name: Appears on list between 21640 and 21660

147

  1. French

  2. At least 4 that I know of (it’s hard to get any info because my dad lost contact with his father’s side of the family while very young and never got to look into things), but it’s a common enough Quebecois name that I’m sure it goes way back.

  3. I was stunned to see it in the 3600 range of that list. It beats out a lot of other names that I was convinced were more common.

148

  1. My surname is a place-name from northeastern Europe. Placing it can be tricky, not because we don’t know where it is, but because it’s changed ownership many times over - when my family left it was in East Prussia, but you could just as easily call it Poland, or Russia, or Lithuania. Anyway, as the population of the area was ethnically Lithuanian, and my paternal grandfather’s family was Lithuanian Jewish, we assume that’s where they came from.

  2. My ancestors arrived in this country in the long-ago year of 1971; I was the first in my family to be born here. My great-grandparents arrived in the U.S. sometime around 1905 (I have it written down somewhere, but not here), except for one great-grandmother who was born in New York, and was said to have attended President Grant’s funeral.

  3. Somewhere around 18,000-19,000 in the U.S. list. I don’t know how common it is in here, but not very; the varient with the -er at the end is much more common, and people often add it automatically, much to my chagrin

149

I can appreciate that. Reminds me of the one about the alligator, but it’s pretty blue and I don’t want to hijack my own thread. :wink: