The average American detects something foreign or ethnic about the names Ambrogioli, Angelopoulas, Chrzaszcy, Dobrovichev, or Espinosa, yet he sees nothing foreign in the names Buick, Chrysler, Packard, or Studebaker. Likewise, there is nothing especially foreign about Custer, Pershing, Hoover, or Eisenhower, or even about Nimitz and Kimmel. There are two reasons for this: First, the German language is closely related to English and, second, such names have been around long enough to be quite at home.
Most Americans with German names do not know what their names mean. Many do not even know that their names are of German origin. This is because most German-Americans, they are just Americans--the word German disappeared along with the hyphen in 1917, if not long before. Also, the United States is such a melting pot that not many old Americans are of solely German descent; the few who are can be found in small, isolated religious sects. A man named Schultz may be predominantly Irish, and a man named O'Leary may be predominantly German.
With the recent revival of interest in roots and ethnicity, many Americans with German names are becoming curious about the origin and meaning of their names. To satisfy their curiosity, German-Americans sometimes consult German dictionaries, not realizing that names often differ markedly from their current dictionary meaning. For example, Schaffner, Schirm, Rechner, and Flieger now mean "streetcar conductor," "umbrella," "computer," and "aviator." But when German surnames were adopted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were no streetcars, umbrellas, computers, or airplanes, and the names meant instead "steward," "protection," "accountant," and "plowman" (from Pflueger).
Americanization of German names
When the first Germans came to America toward the end of the seventeenth century, the British authorities had difficulty with their outlandish names, especially since many Germans were illiterate and the literate ones wrote in the dreadful German script, which the English could not decipher. In a few cases the scribe asked the meaning of the names and translated them, and thus Becker, Koch, Schneider, Schuster, and Zimmermann became Baker, Cook, Taylor, Shoemaker, and Carpenter. It was customary in the eighteenth century to translate Christian names, as we still do today in the case of rulers like Friedrich der Grosse and Wilhelm der Zweite, whom we know as Frederick the Great and William the Second. Christian names were also translated when used as surnames, so Friedrich Wilhelm became Frederick Williams and Franz Ernst became Francis Earnest.
In far more cases the scribe merely wrote the name like the nearest sounding English name known to him, so Mack became Mock, Hund became Hunt, and Weidmann became Whiteman. If the German name did not suggest an English equivalent, the scribe usually wrote the name phonetically as best he could, so that Jaeger became Yeager, Theiss became Dice, and Weiss became Wise. The digraph ie often became ea thereby causing Kieffer, Rieser, and Ziegler to become Keafer, Reaser, and Zeagler. In a few cases, probably inadvertently, the correct sound (the true component) of the name was saved by a change in spelling, and thus Erhard, Gerhard, and Igelhart saved the sound of their names by spelling them Earheart, Gearhart, and Eagleheart. Of course, some immigrants or their offspring changed their names for professional reasons:
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