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Meaning & History
Means "black earth", derived from Greek μελανός (melanos), the genitive of the adjective μέλας (melas) meaning "black, dark", and χθών (chthon) meaning "land, earth, soil". A famous bearer was Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), a Protestant leader and associate of Martin Luther, in whose case this surname was a Greek translation of his original German surname Schwartzerdt of the same meaning (i.e. "black earth" in German).