Mr. Udolph, if you had the choice, what name would you like to have?
Morgenschweiss (Morningsweat), that’s a name I’d like. It sounds idiotic, I know, but it’s what they call a man who is already hard at work when others are still in bed. But that’s what name research is all about – it provides a wealth of information and is incredibly exciting.
What does your surname tells us about your family history?
It’s one of the oldest names in Germany, about 1,700 years old. It only occurs about 50 times today. An average family name in Germany is used by about 500 to 600 different people. Mine goes back to an Old Germanic name. It’s made up of two parts: Ud, which refers to an Od (a beautiful place, a possession), and Wolf, in this case shortened to -olph. The combination of possession and wolf doesn’t make much sense, of course, but then that is often the case in Old Germanic names. That’s because in those days two elements could be combined in any way a person liked. The reason for this is that a father passed on part of his name to his son: so Hildebrand might call his son Hadubrand, so the “brand” part was passed on. And they didn’t worry about whether the new combined word made any sense or not.
So German names are full of messages and meanings?
Definitely. Every name originally had a meaning. That’s also the case in virtually all other languages, too. In fact, if you work as a name researcher in Germany it’s good to have some knowledge of Slavic languages, since about 15 million people in Germany have Polish or Slavic names. In addition, you often find Czech names, Danish names in north Germany, and French ones in the southwest. Name research in northern Europe is a bit more monotonous. There are many names like Jansen, Hansen and the like. The suffix -sen simply means son.
How many German surnames are there?
850,000. And the surprising thing is that 530,000 of these only occur once. Of course, they often only differ by one letter, but such diversity is nevertheless very surprising. By the way, the most common surnames are the different variations of Schmidt and Müller. Some 11% of all Germans are called Schmidt, 9.5% Müller.
How does a surname come into being?
As far as the Greeks and the Teutons were concerned, one name was enough. If someone came to a German village in the 10th century looking for a man called Karl, everybody knew where he lived in a place with a population of, say, 200. Things were very different three hundred years later, though. In a small town, the visitor would probably be asked: “Which Karl d’you mean? Fat Karl, Big Karl or Karl the smith?” Surnames became necessary to identify people as populations grew in the 12th and 13th centuries. Four groups of surnames arose. Names such as Ullrich or Carstensen developed from first names. Origin names tell us a person’s home town. Herr Merseburger comes from Merseburg, Frau Frankfurter from Frankfurt. This group includes not only towns and villages, but also localities. Frau Angermann lived near the Anger (village green), Herr Althaus in an old house.
The third group came from job titles: Jäger (hunter), Schmied (blacksmith), Müller (miller) and so on. They are the most common names, because every village in Germany had its artisans and other workpeople. Particularly interesting names are those that say something personal about someone, about their hair, physique or character. For instance, there is a German actress called Cornelia Froboess. This is a name I wouldn’t like to be called, because it’s Low German for “early bad”, “early rotten”.
How do you research the meanings of names?
My staff and I use the 1998 telephone directories on CD-ROM. At that time, virtually every household in East Germany had also got a telephone, and there weren’t yet many mobile-phone entries. So 1998 is an ideal year for name research. About 35 million names are listed in all. The CD-ROMs tell us how common a name is and how it’s distributed across the country. The area of distribution often tells us where a name comes from. The search then continues in standard works, dialect dictionaries for example.
How often are you asked: “Who am I?”
I work for seven radio stations and one television station. I answer about 30 queries a week from listeners and viewers. Any further enquiries I receive I send to the University of Leipzig’s Information Centre for Names. People like to know where they come from. It fascinates them.
What was the toughest nut you’ve had to crack so far?
It was a Jewish name from Poland. At some time the bearers of the name went to Lithuania, where it was adapted to the language there. Finally, the name was later Germanized as well. Names like that can really give you a hard time. Streisand is another interesting one. A relative of the famous American singer and actress rang me once on one of my radio programmes and asked me where the name came from. After some research we discovered the following: only twelve people still have this Jewish name. All the others were killed in the Holocaust. The clues led us to a village in Ukraine, more specifically to Galicia on the border with Poland. The original name was Streusand (scatter sand). It stood for a writer, someone who scatters sand on his papers to dry the ink. So an ancestor of Barbra Streisand was a Jewish writer or scribe in western Ukraine.
We are often asked about difficult or bizarre names. Take Bleifuss (lead foot) for example. It has nothing to do with a reckless car driver, but goes back to hunting with falcons. These birds have bluish feet – so one of the person’s ancestors worked as a falconer. Another tough one is Stummvoll (silentful). It has absolutely nothing to do with silence. On the contrary, it’s a name for a successful pub landlord whose parlour (Stube) was always full.
