oldenburg-l - Nachricht 2006-08 00069

[Margot King <margot.king(a)ca.inter.net>]

Dear Fred, Warner and Joseph,

You people really are something else again! I can't believe how 
friendly, helpful and generous you all are. Many many thanks.

Margot.

P.S. I have no doubt that I'll have more questions but I think I'll 
leave you all in peace right now.

On Aug 22, 2006, at 11:18 AM, W. Fred Rump wrote:

> On 8/21/06, Margot King <margot.king(a)ca.inter.net> wrote:
>
> > The website helped a lot but I'm still wondering about the
> > surnames of my Meyer-Holzgrefe ancestors. Would I be right to presume
> > that the Handorfs and Bergmanns were the descendants of  Holzgrefe
> > daughters and the various sponsors whose surnames were Holzgrefe or
> > Meyer-Holzgrefe the descendants of younger sons?
>
> Margot,
> names are funny things! Typically there was nothing authoritative
> about assigning them. They sort of just happened. Today that's all
> different but the rage in Germany is to double up on the surnames at
> marriage. Lots of folks have hyphenated names today. It becomes a
> problem when their children marry again into another hyphenated name.
> It's a bit cumbersome to use both the mother's and father's last name
> to result in something like Hans & Angela Meyer-Schmidt-Holz-König for
> example. They may even have rules against that. :-)
>
> But in the past such joinings were mostly for the preservation of two
> distinguished
> family names who by themselves stood for something in the community.
> Say the daughter of the biggest farm married the son of another big
> farm or even a guy who had nothing but his name. Her prestige remained
> with her family but she added her husband's name to hers at marriage.
> One could conjure up many reasons for the joining of names but the
> individual circumstances may always be different and difficult to
> untangle centuries later. Usually it was done simply by custom and
> once things got writtten down in the church it became sort of
> official. Unless one searches deep in to the local history and
> researches farm ownership records (if they exist) it is probably just
> left alone to be what it is.
>
> Our son changed his last name to Rumpf at marriage. I know the whole
> circumstances surrounding this event but after I'm gone will any of
> this be known? I don't think so. My kids will not talk about it to
> their kids and would not be likely to reveal the whole story anyway to
> anybody. So it will become a mystery as to why our family name was
> changed except for the obvious reason to not be a rump. :-)
>
> Fred
>
> PS if I ever get to write a family history, it will be told even
> though we may leave out some facts. And that's how it goes.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Fred Rump,  Beverly, NJ also
> 730 5th St. NW Naples, FL 34120
> fredrump(a)gmail.com
> http://fredrump.phanfare.com
>
> Chief Justice Earl Warren: "Implicit in the term 'national defense' is
> the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this nation
> apart."
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