Vetsch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vetsch , pronounced [fetʃ] , is a family name from Eastern Switzerland and is considered to be the main family of the community of Grabs in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley , canton of St. Gallen . Vetsch with old citizenship are only detectable there.

Family coat of arms Vetsch a
Family coat of arms Vetsch b
Seal by Markus Vetsch , 1757–1813

Hometowns

Long-established: Grabs (SG)

Naturalizations in the 19th century: none

Naturalizations in the 20th century: Medels im Rheinwald (GR) 1935, Reigoldswil (BL) 1942, St.Gallen 1952 (from Grabs SG), Pfäfers (SG) 1953, Winterthur (ZH) 1953 (from Grabs SG), Oberhelfenschwil ( SG) 1958, Basel 1959 (from Grabs SG), Uetikon am See (ZH) 1961 (from Grabs SG), Zurich 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1958 (from Grabs SG)

Frequency and distribution

According to verwandt.ch there are about 2533 people (950 phone book entries) with this name. Most of these people live in Buchs, Wildhaus and the surrounding area. A second concentration can be found in and around Zurich. A third hotspot is in Jenaz (GR).

The absolute distribution of the name Vetsch in verwandt.ch

According to local.ch there are 1355 results for Vetsch, 144 of them companies. One can clearly see a hearth in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley around Grabs and around Zurich.

In Germany there are 35 phone book entries for the name Vetsch according to verwandt.de and thus approx. 93 people with this name.

Name interpretation

Explanations

Grabser orientation booklet:

1. Vetschan, St. Gallen noblemen of the 13th century. Tavetsch (Romanesque: Tujetsch) is a Grisons community with several villages and is located in the Vorderrhein , Surselva district , in the Disentis district . In Valais there is the Tavetsch family.

2. After the town of Tavetsch near Disentis.

3. According to the Tavetsch family in Valais.

4. To Swiss German Fetsch , 'pitiful drip' (after Idiotikon, see below).

5. To Romanesque vestg, shortening to Latin episcopus 'bishop'.

6. To Romansh vez 'clever, experienced, old' (opposite Malavetsch 'unwise, ill-educated ').

Schweizerisches Idiotikon , vol. 1, col. 1141: Fetsch m .: mostly with the epithet “poor”, pitiful drip, z. B. from a mutilated or limited person, with the subsidiary term of good-naturedness GL [Canton Glarus] and (former Glarner Landvogtei) Werdenberg, where it occurs as a family name. Perhaps too Bavarian Feggs, the stupid; but perhaps an appellative personal name with the form of disregard popular in GL (cf. Fritsch 'Fridolin', Petsch 'Peter'): Vetsch to Felix 'the lucky one'.

Rhaetian name book: Vetsch zu Bonifatius with omission of the first part of the word. To bonum fatum 'good fortune'. The name is used in the German-speaking Alpine foothills (St. Gallen, Reichenau) in Old Romansh. This is also the case with DRS 3 In the footsteps of your name, the family name declarations made by the editorial team of the Swiss Idiotikon. According to the interpretation in the Rhaetian Name Book , the names Fazi, Fetz, Fetzi, Cafetzi, Facinella are derived from the last part of the word -fatius .

It is purely speculative that the name comes from an impoverished noble family «von der Etsch» who emigrated from the Etschtal ( South Tyrol ) to the Rhine valley . Hence the lily in the family coat of arms, which suggests a noble family. Over time the name “from the Adige” to “v. Etsch ”was shortened and then pronounced as“ Vetsch ”.

Conclusion

Due to the early evidence of the name in Fideris (Jenaz district, where a recognizable concentration of the name can still be seen today) and in Grabs, where Vetsch is the main family according to GrabsOS, a Romanesque origin of the name is not unlikely. In this early period Grabs belonged to the Romansh-speaking part of the country. This is how Gantenbein, another Romanic name that is frequent and at the same time documented, originated in Grabs (GrabsOS).

It is difficult to decide which of the Romance origins applies. The related names speak for the interpretation of the RN, it would not be a singular derivation. Vetsch would then be an abbreviation of a personal name that has become a family name. The mentioned historical examples of these related names speak against RN: In Fazi , Petrus Facies 1675, Janet Fatscha 168-, Greta de Faccia 1627 are listed . However, these Faccia evidence could also be secondary transformations.

For vez 'klug' in GrabsOS speaks that the relationship to Fetz, Fetzi would also be given. Vetsch would then have turned from an attribution of properties in the form of an epithet to an appellative family name.

It is noticeable that both interpretations from Romansh contain a positive statement, which is less common than the opposite (cf. Idioticon ).

coat of arms

There are two coats of arms of the families with the name Vetsch:

  • The Vetsch a family coat of arms:
    diagonally right divided by blue and white , below in front a yellow six-pointed star , above in the back half a blue lily , the French     fleur-de-lis known in heraldry . It suggests that the first bearer of the coat of arms was a military . - This is the most widely used coat of arms of the Vetsch families.
  • The Vetsch b family coat of arms:
    yellow circle on a royal blue background. - This coat of arms is a new creation for the owners of the construction business of the same name, founded in 1939, and their descendants. Already Markus Vetsch (1759-1813) had in his a circular seal out. As an oral tradition, he was regarded at the time as a surgical instrument for operation of cataract .

Name bearer

literature

  • GrabsOS: Grabs. A guide from the community. Arbon 1976.
  • HLS: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland. Basel: Schwabe, 2002 ff.
  • RN: Huber, Konrad (ed.). Rhaetian name book. Volume 3: The personal names of Graubünden, part 1. Bern 1986.
  • Swiss Idioticon. Dictionary of the Swiss German language. Collected at the event of the Antiquarian Society. Founded by F. Staub and L. Tobler. Frauenfeld: Huber 1881 ff.
  • David Vetsch: The land register of the community of Grabs 1463. Ed. By the historical-local history association Werdenberg. Buchs SG, 1963.
  • Daniel Wilhelm Hartmann: coat of arms sketchbook. With 1500 to 1600 coats of arms. 1861. p. 157, location in 1982: Vadiana City Library, St. Gallen, 111b of the Mscr. Room.
  • Seal of Dr. med. Markus Vetsch (1757-1813). Location in 1982: Helvetic Archive R.158 F.2 Subf.9.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Family name book of Switzerland.
  2. ↑ Article Fetsch .

See also