The now available sixth volume of the German Surname Atlas (DFA) contains forty-nine sets of maps with a total of 253 detailed maps showing the distribution of surnames derived from given names. The ...

The German Surname Atlas documents the spatial distribution of German surnames in 2005 in a six-volume work containing some 2,000 annotated maps. The fourth volume in the series was recently published ...

Germany’s justice minister has launched plans to relax the country’s strict restrictions on family names — for example allowing couples to take double-barrelled surnames and pass them on to their ...

Occupational names are more common among our German ancestors than in our other families. Probably the German respect for work accounts for this, and 700 to 800 years ago when the name-giving period ...