Meier (family name)

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Distribution of the name Meier in Germany (2005)

Meier and its variants are family names in the German- speaking area .

Origin and meaning

Latin name

A Meier ( lat. Maior or maius "bigger, stronger, more important") was originally an administrator. There was the house meier ( maior domus ) in the feudal-political area (cf. Karl Martell ) and the land manager , later reduced to the lessee of a rural estate, from which the name was transferred to the rural estate ( dairy ). The Meierrecht has been documented since 1290 and means the locally specific ownership and administrative right of the farms given administration.

Jewish form

In (German) Judaism in the 18th century, when all Jews were obliged to also use surnames for the purpose of better assignment, the surname Meier (in different regional spellings) developed from the Jewish first name Meir ( Hebrew 'enlightened', proper Meïr rewritten) ). A double first name like Elias Meir became simply the first and last name Elias Mayer .

Other forms

In Old High German, Latin maior develops into Meior, in Middle High German to Meier, Meiger . The English term mayor and the French maire go back to the same Latin word origin.

variants

The name Meier is one of the most common family names in the German-speaking world.

For the spelling Meyer alone there were over 100,000 entries in the 2005 telephone books in Germany (5th place), with all variants there were around 260,000:

Status: Autumn 2002 (Meijer, Maijer: Winter 2005)

distribution

The spelling Mayer is mainly used in the southwestern German-speaking area, especially in Baden-Württemberg , while the variants with an "e" are more likely to be found in the Low German-speaking area in the north. In Switzerland, Meier is the most common variant with 21,750 hits, followed by Meyer with 11,596 hits in the 2005 telephone directory.

In compound family names with the endings -meier , -meyer , which originated mainly in the area Osnabrück to East Westphalia or in Switzerland, Meier often means (small) farmer. Examples include: Bergmeier , Brinkmeier , Clausmeyer , Grillmaier , Grönemeyer , Händlmaier , Hofmeier , Hörnschemeyer , Kottmeier , Mittermeier , Nestmeyer , Niedermayer , Nullmeier , Obermeier , Ostermeyer , Schäfermeier , Sedlmayr , Stiglmaier , Sundermeier , Westermeier . In addition, he can also refer to the exercise of an office, for example with the name Stühlmeyer or Meyer zum Stuhle, to the exercise of the office of judge (judge's seat).

The name has also spread outside the German-speaking area through emigration . In the English- speaking world there is synonymous with German Meier, but less common, the name version Major (English mayor " mayor , mayor "). Far more common in the Anglo-Saxon area, however, is the name Stewart or Steward, which is derived from the Old English stigweard and has the same word meaning as court administrator and held this function there.

Meier Hole

The Meier-Loch describes the phenomenon that with the geographical distribution of the name Meier in all its spellings in Germany, the name hardly occurs in Central Germany . The reason for the Meier-Loch is that in the middle of Germany this court manager was called Hof (f) mann .

Name bearer

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G

H

I.

  • Isaak Meier (* 1950), Swiss lawyer and university professor of British origin
  • Isabel Meier (* 1966), Swiss film editor

J

K

L.

M.

N

O

P

R.

S.

T

U

V

W.

Y

Z

  • Zacharias Meier (approx. 1550–1617), German merchant, customs clerk and diplomat

supporting documents

  1. ^ Entry Meierrecht . In: German legal dictionary , DRW Online, ed. from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.
  2. ↑ Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher : Etymological dictionary of German family names. Limburg a. d. Lahn, 1957, p. 249.
  3. ^ Max Gottschald: German onomastics. Our family names. 5th edition, Berlin / New York, 1982, p. 346.
  4. ^ [1] Online Etymology Dictionary
  5. ^ Karl Salomo Zachariä, Forty Books from the State, Academic Publishing Bookshop by CF Winter, Heidelberg 1839, Volume 3, Book 16, p. 159
  6. ↑ Adapted from Meier-Loch ; the authors are named in the version history
  7. ↑ Article Mainzer Rhein-Zeitung of April 9th, 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 29 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.uni-mainz.de  
  8. ↑ Article Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 25, 2007

See also

Wiktionary: Meier  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations