Surnames
Is Sixkiller a Native American surname?
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Replies

Yes, it's Cherokee.
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On Ancestry.com it says this name could also be a variation of a German surname. Would you agree with this?
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Can you give me the exact address where this is stated? The information I have from Ancestry.com at http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Shrimplin-family-history.ashx says the name is unexplained. If the name were German, it would be Schrimplin or maybe Schrimpflin, but these don't exist in Germany. In any case, the first American Shrimplin came from England, as you can see at http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:3257152&id=I360, and his ancestors were all from that country.
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Shrimplin, interesting surname as well. But I think that surname comes from the message directly above. I was asking about the surname Sixkiller, which you said was Cherokee, and I agree. But on the ancestry.com website, it mentions Sixkiller being an Americanized form of a German surname as well. I was just wondering what your opinion on this was. Thank you.
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Sorry about the mixup. It had crossed my mind that Shrimplin might have a German origin so that's probably why I jumped on that here. The stuff on Ancestry.com about Sixkiller has absolutely no basis in fact. An explanation I found on the web is that "on the rolls of the Cherokee Nation in 1835 were men named “Six Killer” (and Sixkiller is still a name easily found among the Oklahoma Cherokee), “Three Killer,” and “Four Killer.” These names were most likely taken because of some repeated successes in battles against the Catawbas or the Creeks." Another surname in the same vein is Fivekiller.
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Thank you for the explanation.
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Thank you for the explanation.
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