Help with German surname forms for females

Question

I am noticing that with certain surnames for females among Swiss German emigrants to America that the surname sometimes appears with an "-in" added at the end.  It seems to be only the females -- for example, the last name for Barbara Würtz sometimes appears as Würtz and sometimes "Würtzin".  Her mother appears both as Elsbeth Scholer and Elsbeth Scholerin.  Is there something going on her that I should understand?  Which is the proper LNAB?

Comments

Your question made me wonder if there were people listed with LNAB Wurtzin and I came across  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wurtzin-1 who seems very similar to the profile you reference. 

edited to add link

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Thank you, you are right.  This is clearly based on the same Barbara but attached to another random Rager man (who was born and died in Bavaria, but apparently came to Switzerland to marry Barbara, based on an unsourced Ancestry tree[!].)  Thank you, I will fix it.

Answer 1

This is not restricted to Swiss German. You'll find the -in ending for women all over the German-speaking world. It is a grammatical ending that turns a word into its female counterpart.

This can still be seen in modern German, although it is now only done for job titles: A female baker (Bäcker) is a "Bäckerin". A female miller (Müller) is a "Müllerin".

I suggest to use the "neutral" form "Würtz" as the LNAB, and add "Würtzin" under Other Last Name(s). Unlike some Slavic languages (Czech, Russian, etc.), German doesn't consistently inflect names.

Comments

WikiTree contains some mixed messaging on this topic.  The page on German names says to use the neutral form as LNAB:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:German_Names#Female_endings

However, here is a different page that says to use the gendered form:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Fields_for_Czech_Names#Last_Name_at_Birth

One problem that I see, whatever the choice of LNAB, is that a search for say Weber will not bring up people with the name Weberin, and vice versa, so there is potential for duplication.

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I would always use the gendered form for Czech and Russian names; these languages still handle male and female names differently today. For German names, no.

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The ending- s is problematic, because it sometimes represents the genitive, sometimes an own name, before 1770 in Northern Germany it can be a patronym or just a female ending.

The different presentation in the name guidelines is based on the fact that Slavic names are treated differently than German names.

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Actually, the page on Czech names that I linked to above specifically includes the German -in ending as one to be added, saying "Use -ova (Czech) or -in (German) for all names regardless of time period or what's written in the parish record".

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But that is not referencing German names for Germans under the Germany Project's guidelines.  It's for Germanic-Czechs.

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Please remember that there was a sizeable German-speaking minority in Czechoslovakia until 1945. If the Czech project wants to handle their names like Czech names, that's what they are going to do. It has no effect whatsoever on how German names are handled in Germany.

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Yes, the -s is problematic. If available I would go with the youngest record for the name. Sometimes the family names seem to have kept the -s. Then I would use it also on older records, but if it is gone on younger records, I would treat it as the genitive and use the base name.

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You may also find -s and -i or -ae (the Latin equivalent) in free variation, which can make it difficult to decide what the proper last name should be. Sometimes the Latin form sticks, even though the earliest forms of the name had the ending -s.

I don't have a specific Wikitree example of this applied to women specifically, but compare the four generations Jacob Bodenbender (born abt.1505), his son Henrich Bodenbender (abt.1530-1580), alias "Jacobs Henche", his son Johann Bodenbender (abt.1563-1626), alias "Jacobs Henches Johann", and his sons, who carried the latinized family name "Jacobi" (which is what the family is still called today). The same process, applied to female names specifically, can also lead to the formation of new family names, ending in -s, -ae, or -in.

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I’ve also seen plenty of evidence for this. For example older German records from the former West Prussia area consistently use -in surname suffixes on marriage records. Another place I’ve seen this is for birth records involving unmarried mothers in the same region.

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In my family tree the female form Ruoffin was used in the 17th century, à la mode. Could be found in church registers. The region is Württemberg.

But attention, Frischlin, Reuchlin and others are origin names.

Today a new movement is in Germany on the way, some wifes add the -in as suffix to her names.

Today

Answer 2

I read several years ago that the "-in" suffix indicated a widow. I have found this to be true in every case I have seen.

Comments

Concluding from the -in suffix that a person is a widow would not be correct. What you can conclude from it is that the widow is a woman, but that doesn't tell you much that you didn't know already...

The suffix may be have been applied to any woman that is mentioned in the records. That may have been someone's wife, or a widow, or an unwed daughter. Considering that a married wife was less likely to enter the record (as her husband would have served as a proxy while he's alive), widows will be overrepresented among those names with the suffix. That's a bias in our records.

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Don't know. I was just trying to help. But no good deed goes unpunished. . .

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Oh, please don't take my comment the wrong way! I am in no way suggesting that your answer wasn't helpful; just that what you read may not be true.

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My experience with German Bohemian records is that I have mainly seen the -in ending attached to infant females, and not much later in life.  But it might be that I couldn't read the handwriting well enough.

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That's absolutely possible. Any female who isn't married has some chance of carrying the -in suffix. That mainly includes infants, and widows. But it's not limited to unmarried women, and there are just as many cases of married women with as without the suffix.

As for German Bohemian records, please note that these are a special case, compare the discussion here. Unlike names of Germans from Germany, these should carry the -in suffix on Wikitree, regardless of what's found in the church records.

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EDIT: I just saw that I'm pointing you to your own comments there - sorry. Anyway, maybe the cautious note will be useful to whoever reads this comment.