Von: carlah@earthlink.net (Carla)
  Datum: 02.12.98, 13:05:29
Betreff: Re: "-in" suffix on Surnames of Women

Don Hickman wrote:

> I agree with the points you made but I would like to add that in the
> research I have done the "-in" seems to have been added to the surnames of
> unmarried women only.  I have assumed that it was a way of indicating a
> young lady's marital status.  I wonder if someone here can verify or
> refute this.  Regards, Don Hickman

Dear Don & Baden-Wuerttemberg List Friends,

I would also be interested if one of our native German-speaking members
could answer this question.

Don is correct in that one of the most common places you may see the "-in"
suffix in German surnames is a marriage register (usually in reference to
the woman being married).  However, both my German language professors and
my late German-speaking father and  have always emphasized that this German
grammatical device does not so much denote a woman's *marital status* as it
does her *gender.*

The supporting evidence that this is an indication of feminization is that
many German nouns (not just female proper names) acquire the "-in" suffix to
denote feminine gender (such as "Freund" becoming "Freundin" for a female,
meaning "friend," and "Lehrer" becoming "Lehrerin," meaning "female
teacher.")

The odd thing about the feminizing suffix of "-in" added to surnames in
*records* is that it would appear NOT to be universal---I have seen the
names of both unmarried and married females in my research represented in
both formats, with and without the "-in."  In records for certain locations
I have researched, NONE of the women are designated with a surname suffix of
"-in"---their standard surname is used instead.  It may be dependent on the
particular habit or practices of the person who was creating the written
record in question, such as the parish priest or minister writing in the
church register.

Hopefully, our German-speaking friends can enlighten us further.

Warmest regards,
Carla HELLER
Los Angeles