Hallman?
While searching my last name on the database, I saw that it said my name was "English or Swedish". Knowing this to be impossible, I reasearched more into my "family tree". My family is German, and came straight from Germany to New York. There is no English or Swedish. So... what I am asking is where did they get that from?
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Okay, after further research I went to "Hall", because Hallman is an occupational varriant. On Hall it says it is a Germanic name, so would that have anything to do with my name being German?
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If you look here -
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?fid=10&ln=Hallman
you will see that an English, or Swedish, OR German origin is possible, though the original German spelling had a double-L ending.
English, German and Swedish all trace back to a common ancestral language that linguistic historians have named "Old Germanic".
English word MAN is MAN in Swedish also, and MANN in German. English word HALL is HALL in Swedish and HALLE in German.
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In German, there is another possible interpretation of the element HALL: salt mine. So HALLMANN could have been someone working in such a mine or a factory producing salt.In Grimm's dictionary I found this:HALLKNECHT, m. arbeiter im salzwerke zu Halle a. S. HOHNDORF beschreibung des salzwerks; s. hallor. HALLMEISTER, m. siedemeister (boiler) in einem salzwerk.
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Apologies: line two should read - spelling had a double-N ending.
I hope that hasn't created any problems.
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No it hasn't! You were very helpfull, thank you!
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