Pre-1700 German naming conventions

Question

I have a profile for Anna Barbara Gunn ( Gunn-4810)  (1640 - 1681).

She married "Franz von Weltz Freiherrn zu Eberstein" and I want to add his profile, but I do not know what I am supposed to put as his LNAB.

I know the LNAB is supposed to be just one word, and omit the "von", but should it be Weltz?  Freiherrn? Eberstein?

I could ASSUME I should use the last one, but I do not know if that is correct.

(Yes, I am pre-1700 certified, but this is my first time dealing with German profiles.)

Answer 1

I would lean toward von Weltz as his LNAB. "Freinherrn zu Eberstein" looks to me like a title of nobility, and Google Translate agrees, rendering it as "Baron of Eberstein." But that leads me to ask whether there is reason to believe that this ancestor married an aristocrat. Is there a solid source for this marriage, or is this from somebody's "family tradition" that may have embroidered upon the family history?

Comments

Thanks

Yes, I am confident of this marrage

http://www.30jaehrigerkrieg.de/gunn-guin-gwynn-gwin-guon-gunne-guyn-william-wilhelm-freiherr-von/ (about her father, Baron William Gunn, who fought in the Thirty Years War) translated into English, says:

"

In 1639 he was made a baron. On 6.6. In 1640 he married in Ulm Anna Margareta von Freyberg [1609-?], who was fond of the Schwenckfeld sect[168], the daughter of Georg Ludwig von Freyberg, Freiherr von Freyberg-Justingen [1574-1631] and Barbara von Eberstein, Countess von Eberstein-Rixingen [approx. 1572-?]."

and

"His daughter Anna Barbara [1640-1681] married Franz von Weltz Freiherr zu Eberstein [23.7.1635-1674]. In the marriage letter concept[225], Anna Barbara described herself as belonging to the Reformed religion.[226]

Gunn's planned Staufeneck sale was not completed until 1665 by his widow Anna Margareta von Freyberg and his daughter Anna Barbara Freifrau von Weltz zu Eberstein, namely to Ferdinand Freiherrn von Degenfeld,[227] son ​​of Christoph Martin von Degenfeld, who was a friend of Gunn's.[228]"

[225] Hohenlohisches Zentralarchiv Neuenstein: Sf 75 Bü 143.

[226] is just a discussion about the definition of "Reformed Religion".

Also, the Wikipedia article for her daughter, Barbara Franziska of Welz-Wilmersdorf ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Franziska_of_Welz-Wilmersdorf ), says:

"Franziska Barbara of Welz-Wilmersdorf (4 August 1666 – 3 April 1718 in Wilhermsdorf) was baroness of Wilhermsdorf. She was the daughter of Francis of Welz-Eberstein (1635–1674), Count of Welz, Baron of Eberstein, and Anna Barbara de Gun (1640 – c. 1681), daughter of William Gunn (born 1600), Freiherr von Ulm"

(But note that that text makes it sound as if BOTH "Weltz" AND "Ebertsein" are titles, not names.)

Answer 2

"Freiherr" = "Baron"; the surname is "von Weltz". The wife of a baron was called "Freifrau", so her married name and title would be "Anna von Weltz, Freifrau zu Eberstein".

Answer 3

Should the LNAB be with or without the "von"?

Comments

"We agree on the fact that nothing whatsoever changed circa 1600" -- I'm glad we agree that the current rule, as far as this is concerned, isn't useful. As Andrew Lancaster suggested in their comment before you, we have a responsibility not to create "fake news". That's precisely what I'm concerned about.

"Just as a family named "X" or "Xer" was not assumed to be non-noble" -- No. When a member of a noble family that used to be "von X" did not carry the "von" then that person was absolutely assumed to be non-noble, and that meant something (the 16th/17th century examples I know are due to illegitimacy, but there may be alternative reasons that I am unaware of.) On the other hand, when a person was enobled, this was usually indicated by adding "von" to their name, regardless of whether that name had any connection to a place.

I have never heard of the suggestion that a family named "Xer" would be assumed to be noble. A noble branch of that family would be "von Xer", if anything.

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An example. Löwenstein and Caspar, two members of the noble family von Hatzfeld (either brothers or half-brothers) from the town of Hatzfeld, sons of Johann Gebhard von Hatzfeld (abt.1535-1622), used to carry the nobility particle "von" until some time in the 1620s, when they and their descendants stopped using it altogether (compare here, here, and here). The arising branches of the family simply called themselves "Hatzfeld" from then on, probably to indicate that they were not legitimate members of the noble family.

Outside of Wikitree, I usually denote those people as "A (von) X", with the nobility particle in parentheses. How would you suggest to make clear the distinction on Wikitree?

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Usually, we'd add the LNAB as Hatzfeld and OLN as von Hatzfeld so both versions of the name are searchable.

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Thanks Traci.

I can't honestly claim that this sounds like the optimal solution to me, but if it's what Wikitree has come up with then so be it. I don't work on "nobility profiles" nearly often enough to justify how much I care about this.

If you like, please take a quick look at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hatzfeld-49 (formerly https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Von_Hatzfeld-6), to see if this conforms with the rule.

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This is simply a naming guideline established by the EuroAristo project that many other projects have adopted. It's not a "rule" that is set out on a WikiTree Help page. Projects like England, Magna Carta, etc. follow these guidelines and the Germany Project refers to them as well in it's Nobility/Medieval naming guidelines page HERE.  

However, for profiles not managed by a project, it's ultimately it's up to the profile manager how to display the LNAB. As you've seen above, the whole issue is debatable. The real goal of these guidelines is searchability and preventing duplicates from being added to the tree. Adding "von" to a profile's LNAB may prevent the system from finding a duplicate that doesn't have "von" in a name field (and vice versa). In these cases, adding both versions, one as LNAB and the other in CLN/OLN is the best solution.

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A couple of thoughts: "von" in the names of commoners was pretty much confined to Northern Germany, everywhere else in German speaking lands it did denote nobility.

In very early documents nobility was mentioned only with title and given name but already in the 11th century we find "last names", for instance Berthold von Villingen, d. 1024, presumably because there were too many counts named Berthold. By the 13th century it had become quite common to have family names. And of course, all these names were derived from locations. Von plus non-location names were a rather modern invention when people got ennobled but without any territorial title and so the "von" was just added in front of their family name. We have a quite elegant solution to the problem of whether to add the von in the LNAB field or not: there are generally plenty of documents available naming the people involved and if they are called "von somewhere or something" that would logically be the name to use. As to "von und zu", "von" generally is the family name, "zu" denotes their residence. This was often written hyphenated, but that is also a modern invention.

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Daniel wrote: "when a person was enobled, this was usually indicated by adding "von" to their name, regardless of whether that name had any connection to a place."
That's what they did in the 19th century, yes. Do you actually have an earlier example?
For your von Hatzfeld examples, the first two appear to add a preposition rather than taking one away, which as Helmut wrote, generally meant that they lived in the place that their family was named for. I'm therefore confused about what those examples are supposed to illustrate.

For early uses of "von" in names, one needs to be careful about correlation versus causation: yes, a lot of people with "von" names were noble, or a lot of noble families had "von" names -- but that's because they were the property owners, so they were not only closely associated with their properties, but also more likely to be recorded by name.

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"Do you actually have an earlier example" -- The most recent one I came across from my own town (just last week) was https://www.lagis-hessen.de/pnd/124896707, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Jonas_von_Mylius, Mylius-52 on Wikitree, enobled in 1702. The family name is the latinized form of "Müller" (miller). Another example would be some of the sons of https://www.lagis-hessen.de/pnd/129039144.

"I'm therefore confused about what those examples are supposed to illustrate." -- The two lived in Hatzfeld, yes, hence why they were both "von" and "zu". There were numerous branches of the Hatzfeld family nearby, notably in Biebighausen (calling themselves "von Hatzfeld zu Biebighausen") and - a bit later - in Allendorf/Eder (calling themselves "von Hatzfeld zu Allendorf"), just to name those within a 10 mile radius. "Von Hatzfeld zu Hatzfeld" was the branch of the family that lived in Hatzfeld itself. That's of minor importance here; the main point I was trying to make is that they stopped using the nobility particles in the 1620s, and their descendants were just plain "Hatzfeld"; and that this is hard to "encode" in the way Wikitree uses LNAB and OLN.

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"We have a quite elegant solution to the problem of whether to add the von in the LNAB field or not" -- Thanks Helmut, you put my main point of criticism into better words than I could.

I agree that the name found in the original sources should be the name used in LNAB. The problem is that this is not how Wikitree handles this issue.

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"but also more likely to be recorded by name." -- That's an important point, yes! There's another issue, with similar consequences: From my own experience, between the 14th and 16th century, many of those called "von X" that were not nobles were citizens of towns who had moved there from place X (usually a village). As citizens, they are more likely to appear in official documents (as witnesses or attestors, for instance) than they would have at their place of origin.

Take https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/detailAction.action?detailid=v2065663 as an example: The attestors (Volpracht von Weifenbach, Gerlach von Eckenfeld, and Wigand von Letter) were non-nobles. The sealers (Johann von Biedenfeld, Adolf von Biedenfeld, Konrad von Eppe, and Denhard von Dunzelshausen) were. Distinguishing between the two may not always be straight-forward, although it is possible. In this case, it's simply a matter of knowing that the sealers all belonged to known noble families, and the attestors were all "just" councilmen.

Answer 4

Freiherrn translate to "Baron". I would list him as:

Lord Frans von Weltz, Baron of Eberstein.

Eberstein is in Austria (unless there are more Eberstein's) Does that make sense?

BTW - for situations like this, may I suggest www.translate.google.com

Paste what you need to translate in the left pane. It normally recognized the language but it can also be manually selected.

Once it is in the left pane, the translation appears in the right pane immediately and can be cut and pasted from there in a language also of your choice, ie English.