Sander (name)

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The first and later family name Sander is from the 12th / 13th centuries. The short form of Alexander , which was created and often used in the German , Dutch and English- speaking areas in the 19th century , just as Hans is still widely known today as the short form of Johannes .

Sander as a first name

As a male first name , Sander was used in Germany until the 17th century, but then disappeared from linguistic usage, while it is still used as such in Dutch today. Likewise, the names Sander and Saunder, which are no longer common today , were used earlier in England . The Saunder variant refers to the name Alexandre , which was initially pronounced in French , and shows the migration of the name from the continent to the island. Similarly, the nicknames Sandro (from Alessandro ) in Italy and Sándor in Hungary are still in use today.

The female form Alexandra is shortened to Sandra , a female given name that is currently still widely used.

Sander as a family name

As Surname Sander has predominantly patronymic developed from the first name and received the German name treasure. In addition, residents of farms with the farm name Sander, which was mostly derived from the first settler and remained independent of the name of later owners, will have adopted this residence name as their family name.

The name is common in northern and central Germany, especially in Lower Saxony and Westphalia . The main area of ​​distribution, measured by the percentage of name bearers in the total population, is in the area around the Teutoburg Forest , the Wiehen Mountains and the western Harz foreland . Even in the neighboring regions of Hesse , Saxony-Anhalt , Thuringia (z. B. in the village Heyda , held in which about 50 500 inhabitants that name) is still relatively common surname, in West Germany, with the exception of Saarland , but already less to be found. The name Sander is rare in southern Germany , Austria and Switzerland . The namesake living there today are probably primarily descendants of immigrants from the north. An estimated 30,000 Sander and Sanders bearers of the name live in Germany today. Abroad, the first name has become a surname in a significant number only on the British Isles . Due to the considerable emigration of Germans and English to the USA , the surname is also common there today. Why the first names known there ( Sander , Sandro , Sándor ) in Dutch, Italian and Hungarian have not evolved into a family name still needs to be investigated.

Origin and development of the name

Sander or Alexander is the Germanized form of the Greek name Aléxandros (as much as: who fends off the [foreign] men , in the figurative sense: the protector ). The name is already around 1280 BC. In a Hittite document in the form Alaksandu as the name of a Bronze Age king of Wilusa . It found acceptance in the German world of names less through the church name (see Pope Alexander III. ), But since around 1140 through the medieval Alexander songs and Alexander novels , which praise Alexander the great and in the Middle Ages were among the most widespread writings after the Bible . This ancient conqueror of the Orient had been brought back into the field of vision of the West with the crusades to the east since 1096, and his name first became popular in aristocratic circles who were able to read. The short form Sander has manifested itself much more often than Alexander or Alex as a family name. This is due to the fact that in German Alexánder ([ a.lɛk.ˈzan.dɐ ]) is stressed differently than in Greek on the third syllable , which promoted the detachment from the original and the new creation of the (linguistically meaningless) short form. This suggests that Sander already as a first name Middle Ages as the original form was far more common, such as in the 1285 in Rostock mentioned Sander Swarenpenning . The Polish spelling Aleksander also shows the syllable border, as does Alexsander (!), Mayor of Breslau , who was attested in 1229 .

The names Zander (especially in northern and eastern Germany, in the Rhine-Ruhr area and partly due to immigration from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also in southern Sweden), Xander (rarely, see Brigitte Xander , actually Ksander ) and Tschander are regional variants and in the same way and wise emerged. In contrast to many other family names, Sander and Zander have been inherited very stably through the centuries. Changes from sander to pikeperch or vice versa are known to only a few. Due to the usual shift from -ande to -ange on the Lower Rhine (Krefeld / Viersen / Mönchengladbach) , the variants Zanger (s) and Sangers prevailed , of which only the form Zanger has survived . A rare variant is the smoothed Sanner shape . The name forms Sanders , Zanders , Sandersen , Sanderson (English), Sandering (Low German) are patronyms and mean something like Sanders son or Sanders servant etc. Sanderling (cf. Kurt Sanderling ) is a diminutive of Sander. The rare name Santer (cf. Jacques Santer ) can be a variant of Sander, but is more likely to be borrowed from the Latin term sanctus .

In England, the patronymic forms Sanders and Saunders have emerged as family names.

Other possible interpretations of the family name

The family Sander can also serve as origin or dwelling place name are interpreted, which refers to one of the many local and field names sand or the like, on the sand.. Or refers a dwelling on sandy terrain. A sander is therefore someone who was resident in one of these places or corridors . However, this was far less important for the name formation than the previously discussed personal name, which can also be read from the surnames Sand (t) and Sande , which are much less common than Sander and which refer directly to a place of this name. Such sandy terrain is shown by z. B. also the East Frisian place names Großsander , Kleinsander , Ostersander and Westersander , the forest Sander Tannen or the Sanderglacis in Würzburg . The name Sandner is also derived from the corresponding place names.

The fish names sander and pikeperch are only documented from the 16th century.

A derivation from Sandherr (overseer of a sand pit) or even Sangherr ( cantor ) is also only conceivable in individual cases.

The landscape form Sander is a language creation that emerged in the 19th century (from Icelandic sandr) and is therefore not considered for the formation of family names.

Place names derived from Sander

Place names that contain the personal name Sander are Sandersleben in Anhalt, Groß Santersleben and Klein Santersleben near Magdeburg, Sandersdorf near Bitterfeld, another Sandersdorf in Franconia and Sandershausen near Kassel. They probably emerged from solitary farms that can be traced back to a man named Sander or a similar-sounding name. Sandersleben and the two Santersleben are the oldest of these places. They are made up of Sanders and the Germanic word Leben (v. Gothic laiba = inheritance, legacy, property). Sandersleben therefore means something like Sander's inheritance or Sander's possession . The noble family von Sandersleben , which still exists today, comes from the village of Klein Santersleben . The town of Reichenbach in Upper Lusatia once belonged to a noble von Sander family in Silesia, also known as Sander von Sandershausen .

However, the age of these places reveals a problem that contradicts the derivation of Alexander mentioned above and has yet to be investigated in terms of linguistic history. Sandersleben was first mentioned in 1046 and Santersleben for the first time in 1013 as Groten Sanderslove . Onomastically , the origin of these names can be dated to the 2nd to 4th centuries AD. The name Sander (or similar) therefore seems to have existed among the Germanic peoples even before Christianization . The ancient Germanic personal names Sandheri ( Frisian ), Sandrih , Sandmar , Sandebold , Sandolt , Sandarat , Sandebert and ( Prussian ) Sandar -er, -ir , with the short forms Sando , Sande , Santo etc. (in Indo-European sanpas , Old Norse sannr , Danish sand = "true, the true, the right"). These old Germanic names hardly come into consideration for the direct formation of Sander surnames, as they were long out of use in the High Middle Ages , when surnames first emerged. For the formation of the place names mentioned, however, they can be used and this may only be adapted later to the common later name Sander. This applies at least to Sandershausen , first mentioned in 1167 as Sandrateshusen . In the case of Sandersdorf near Bitterfeld, which was founded around 1150/60, however, a derivation of the new name Sander can be assumed.

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literature

  • Adolf Bach : German naming . 5 vols. (The German personal names I-II, the German place names I-III) , Heidelberg 1952–1956
  • Hans Bahlow : German name dictionary . Munich 1980
  • Hans Bahlow: Silesian name book . Kitzingen / Main, 1953
  • Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher : Etymological dictionary of German family names . Limburg a. d. Lahn 1957
  • Max Gottschald : German onomatology . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 978-3-11-018032-9
  • Albert Heintze , Paul Cascorbi: The German family names, historically, geographically, linguistically . 7th edition Halle / S. 1933
  • Konrad Kunze : dtv-Atlas onomastics . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-03266-9
  • PH Reaney: A Dictionary of British Last Names . London 1976
  • Jürgen Udolph : Name studies on the German problem . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, ISBN 3-11-014138-8

supporting documents

  1. ^ Friedrich Kluge : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 23rd, adult Ed., Unchanged. Nachdr., (Anniversary special edition), de Gruyter, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-11-016392-6 , p. 903 (Zander)
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 9, 2006 .