Müller (family name)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With its variants, Müller is the most common German family name .

Origin and meaning

The personal name Müller comes to the profession of miller ( medieval Latin molinarius back). The Romans had brought mill technology across the Alps, initially using hand mills or mills powered by draft animals. Since the 5th to 8th century manors and castles also had water mills . The use of hydropower by mills was a decisive technical advance in the European Middle Ages and led to a significant increase in the number of professional millers since the 12th century. Millers were an important source of taxes for monasteries and the nobility. Around 1200 farmers were forbidden to continue using their own hand mills for flour production. Place names show that settlements formed around stately mills. Windmills spread particularly in the early modern period in northwest Germany. Around 1860 there are said to have been up to 65,000 mills in Germany.

Accordingly, the name Müller can be found everywhere in the German-speaking area .

People of German origin or other people whose ancestors were called Müller often write the name Mueller or Muller if they live in countries whose written language does not know the umlaut " ü ".

distribution

Distribution of the surname Müller in Germany

Müller is the most common family name in the German-speaking area. In Germany alone there are more than 320,000 entries in the telephone directory (1.5%) (1996 figure). There are also around 40,000 entries of the variants (see: List of the most common surnames in Germany ). According to Jürgen Udolph , around 700,000 Germans bear the name Müller. Worldwide, Müller (including the spelling variants Mueller and Muller) ranks 10th among the most common surnames in the world with around one million namesake, behind Smirnow (2.5 million, 9th) and Smith (4 million, 8th).

Related names and variants

Compositions

There are numerous compositions that describe, for example, the location or type of the mill in more detail. Examples: Bachmüller, Burgsmüller, Hammermüller, Hasenmüller , Holzmüller, Neumüller, Obermüller, Riedmüller, Sägemüller, Stegmüller, Teichmüller, Windmüller, Wolfmüller.

Due to the widespread use of the name and the associated risk of confusion, publicly active name bearers often chose additions to names, often place names, which lead to double names (examples: Müller-Elmau , Mr. Müller-Lüdenscheid ).

Other uses

Name bearer

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G

H

I.

J

K

Ka

Ke

Ki

Kl

Kn

Ko

Kr

Ku

L.

La

Le

Li

Lo

Lu

M.

Ma

Me

Wed

Mon

N

O

P

Q

R.

Ra

re

Ri

Ro

Ru

S.

T

U

V

W.

X

Y

Z

  • Zeno Müller (1818–1894), Austrian Benedictine, abbot of Admont Abbey

literature

  • Gudrun Schury: Our name is Müller. And that's just as well! Almost everything about the most successful German name. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8218-6042-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cajo Kutzbach: Mills, gentle sources of energy in the Middle Ages. In: Deutschlandfunk , August 25, 2011, accessed on November 2, 2019.
  2. ^ Josef Jörissen: Origin and development of the mills in the Rhineland. In: Niederrhein-Magazin , No. 19 (spring / summer 2015), pp. 24–32 (online) .
  3. ↑ Los 10 apellidos más populares del mundo… ¿Está el tuyo? In: NNC.mx , March 1, 2012, accessed November 2, 2019 (Spanish).