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Karl-Heinz Mottausch: Familiennamen als Derivationsbasis im südhessischen: Bezeichnung von Familien und Frauen in Synchronie und Diachronie

In the South Hessian dialects of German, it is possible to derive collective designations for the family from the family name, e.g., [s mil´s] ‘the Müller family’, [s Smid9´] ‘the Schmitt family’; both formations in {-s} and {-´}, originally genitives of the “strong” and  “weak” declensions, respectively, are in complementary distribution, independent of the original usage.  The South Hessian dialects are not uniform, however.  There is a more conservative type, especially in the Odenwald with Lorsch (more extensive use of {-s}), and a more progressive one (with a strong tendency to standardization dependent on the number of syllables) in the rest of the region.

The evolution of the two types can be traced back into the 13th century (with roots in the 12th). An extensive realignment of the earlier system took place after the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), when a large number of new settlers from other areas came into the region which had been devastated by the war. The integration of their names, which lacked any indigenous tradition, caused difficulties and led to a redistribution of the two allomorphs.

Besides these family names, there is also the characteristic designation for women of the type {-´n} or {-s´n}, also in complementary distribution, e.g., [di mil´n] ‘M(r)s Müller’ and [d9i d9i…ls´n] ‘M(r)s Diehl’, respectively.  Both of these suffixes derive from OHG -in(ne); the {-s-} in {-s´n} comes from Old French -esse and was later associated with the genitive -s which survives in the family names in {-s}.