Thursday, Feb. 27, 1997
German roots found in Boucke
By AIMÉE HARRISCollegian Staff Writer
With his thick German accent and natural understanding of the language, Jürgen Eichhoff can quickly explain the entomology of your last name -- if it's German, of course.
Professor Jürgen Eichhoff, of the Department of German, speaks to students and members of the community in Boucke Building on Tuesday. He was speaking on "The Trials and Tribulations of German Family Names in America." (Collegian Photo/David S. Spence - click for full size image)
The reason for the changes in most cases, he said, is laziness.
"You get tired of correcting," said Eichhoff, who has
worked hard to maintain the second "h" in his last name.
There are three types of changes, Eichhoff said. The first is
retention, in which the original spelling of the name is retained
but pronounced differently. Eichhoff pronounced several names
as they would have been said in German, demonstrating the differences
between the traditional pronunciations and the English pronunciations.
The most common type of change, revision, involves a letter or
group of letters being changed or cut from a name, Eichhoff said.
Some of these names may be pronounced the same, but are spelled
differently. In other cases, letters are dropped for simplicity,
such as silent or double consonants.
The English language also lacks umlauts, the accent of two dots
above vowels in German, Eichhoff explained. In cases where family
names were spelled with a "ü" many Americans saw
two "i's" instead. Names such as Biittner, Kiibler,
and Reimschiissel changed due to this mistake, he said.
The last type of change is a complete substitution. In these cases,
the family changes the name so it is not recognizable as a German
name. This can be done in various ways, one of which is to translate
the meaning of the German word into English, Eichhoff said.
Such substitutions have been done with the names Carpenter, formerly
Zimmermann, Schneider, formerly Taylor, and Turnipseed, formerly
Seidenstricker.
Names can also be anglicized by sound in names such as Miller,
formerly Müller and Shield, formerly Schildt.
Jen Urich (sophomore-animal biology science) attended the speech
to find out more about her last name, which probably had an umlaut
above it originally.
"I was interested to find out why (the change) happened,
especially because it applies to me," she said.
Urich was one of the many attendants who spoke to Eichhoff after
the end of the talk.
The speech was held on Tuesday as part of the Max Kade German-American
Research Institute presentations this semester.
