Northern Germany Farm Names
I have many farm owner ancestors from Northern Germany. When a man became a farm owner by marriage or purchase, he changed his surname to the farm name. I am having difficulty figuring out how to manage these different surnames in Family Search. One of my ancestors had three surnames during the course of his life. I know this overlaps with married names vs maiden names, but one difference is that there is often no spouse who has the farm name to make the connection to that name. In many cases neither parent has the same birth surname as the children. This is compounded by the tradition (necessity) that a farm owner or wife remarry within months of being widowed. There are long chains of remarriages where no one was born with the farm name, yet that is the surname on all of their adult records.
How are others entering these Northern Germany farm names?
Best Answers
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One of the great things about Family Tree is that it is designed to handle all those names. Every name in the alternate name section is used in all routines, including searches and the source. You can put a person's name at time of birth as the main name and put every other name the person used as Alternate Names and put in the reason statement when and why the person used the name. I run into a similar issue with my wife's Norwegian ancestors who also had multiple names throughout their lives. I set them up like this:
You just have to get used to the fact that it is fine for people to have many names and that surnames signify more at times than just whom you are related to.
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(need to add another image so am continuing the above post). So go ahead and enter all names.
As far as children not having the same last name as either parent? Again you just have to learn and accept the meanings of surnames at whatever time period you are working in. Here is the family of the above Gjert:
At this point in history in this region of Norway, if you were a farm owner your surname was the name of the farm you currently owned and was a mark of social status. Since he and his wife moved to the Hammersland farm after they were married and lived there the rest of their lives, all their children had the surname of Hammersland even though neither parent had that name at birth.
At this time in history, Norway actually had four surname systems and which one a family used depended on where in the country they lived and their social status (nobility, merchants, farmers, fishermen, laborers, etc.)
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Answers
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Dear@LynnHaddock ,
I personally don't know the best practise for the case you've reported, but for sure you can also submit your request in the below group, specialized in German genealogy.
I hope this can help!
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There is an article here about the practice https://lindstreet.blog/2017/11/25/german-surname-changes/ Perhaps you could try to contact the author Teresa Steinkamp McMillin. There is a link in the article to a podcast which doesn't open for me, but this alternative link seem s to work
https://thegermangenealogygirlspodcast.podigee.io/5-the-german-genealogy-girl-s-podcast-episode-no-5
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I'm working on the Versmold area, and have a lot of Hof names.
I put the name at birth as the primary name, and list the various Hof names as alternate names. "Johann Peter Borgmann" & "Johann Peter Borgmann d. Knepper".
I have seen other people list the Hof name as the primary name, and birth name as an alternate. Although, if they had different Hof names at different times, you would have to choose one as the primary.
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