Place Names (Ortsnamen)
Tracing your Germanic roots
MORE PLACE NAMES > Part 1 | Part 2
Also see the related links and books below.
OFF THE MAP is just one of
the books you'll find below.
Other factors affecting place names are history, wars, migration, and politics. Names change according to who is currently in power or who is culturally dominant. (Something that family history researchers need to be aware of!) Today's Polish Gdansk was once called Danzig because it was predominantly German. The communist East Germans changed Chemnitz to Karl-Marx-Stadt. As soon as the Berlin Wall came down, it was Chemnitz again. Königsberg ("king's mountain"), a Prussian and German city from 1255 to 1945 and home to the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, is now located in Russia and known as Kaliningrad. German Breslau is now Wroclaw, Poland's fourth largest city. The Czech "beer" cities known as Budweis and Pilsen in German are now Ceské Budejovice and Plzen respectively.
Continued below...
| Germanic Place Names and Their Meanings |
|
|---|---|
| Stadt | Meaning of City's Name |
| Bad Godesberg | From Vuodensberg for the god Woden (Wotan). |
| Bad Kissingen | From the Slavic for "sour, bubbling spring" |
| Bayreuth | "Bay" refers to Bavaria (Bayern), "-reuth" from Rodung, "area cleared of trees." |
| Berchtesgaden | From the Latin bareca, a storage place for food. |
| Bern | From Old High German bero, bear. |
| Bonn | From the Celtic word bona, city or town. |
| Düsseldorf | The village (Dorf) on the Düssel river (from an ancient word for water). |
| Frankfurt | The "ford" (Furt) of the Franks (Germanic tribe) |
| Hamburg | Originally Hammaburg, the fortress (Burg) on the ham, ("thicket") |
| Innsbruck | The bridge (-bruck) on the Inn river |
| Karlsruhe | "Karl's rest" or "retreat" was originally a hunting lodge, later applied to the city that grew up nearby. |
| Stuttgart | From Stutengarten, "stud garden," i.e., a breeding farm for horses |
| Wien / Vienna | From the Celtic and Roman Vindobona, later Venia (880 A.D.) |
| Zürich | Probably from the Celtic word for water, dur. The first inhabitants were lake dwellers. The Romans later called the place Turicum. |
| Source for most of the names above: A Short History of German Place Names by Harry Davis, 1988, Atlantik-Brücke, Hamburg | |
The region known as Silesia, Schlesien in German, or Shlask in Polish, was once ruled by the Poles, then the Austrian Habsburgs, later by the Prussians, and finally the Germans. It got its name from the Shlezanie, a Slavic people who once lived there. In 1945 Silesia was returned to Poland, and more than a quarter of the country's population resides there now. The Habsburgs also once ruled over Bohemia (Böhmen), today a part of the Czech Republic. Hitler used the fact that many Sudeten-Germans were living in western Bohemia as a pretext to gain the Sudetenland in 1938. Today there is no longer any governmental entity known as Bohemia, but the name of the former kingdom is applied to the region.
For more about place names, see the books below.
Related Pages
Germanic Genealogy - Contents/Inhalt
Our genealogy start page links to all the articles, glossaries, and resources for tracing your Germanic roots.
German Names (1)
Part 1 of this feature: German first names.
German Names (2)
Part 2 of this feature: German surnames.
German and Genealogy
A beginner's genealogy vocabulary guide and hints for tracing your Austrian, German, or Swiss roots.
Germanic Genealogy
Web Links for Germanic genealogy resources. From your Guide.
BÜCHER • BOOKS in English and German
Name books for German
OFF THE MAP (below)
Deutschlands geographische Namenwelt
Von Hans Bahlow. You can order this book about geographic names in Germany directly from Amazon.de. In German.
Dictionary of German Names
By Hans Bahlow. A detailed English-language reference for more than 15,000 German family names, including variant spellings as well as the meanings and origins of each name. Paperback.
Off the Map: The Curious History of Place-Names
By Derek Nelson. An interesting look at place names all over the world.
The Oxford Dictionary of the World
By David Munro (Ed.). A-Z entries that identify and describe not only places, but physical features all over the globe, including Germany.
MORE BOOKS > Germanic Genealogy Books
MORE > Germanic Genealogy - Contents
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