Message: "What do the surnames Hambright and Hambrecht mean?"

What do the surnames Hambright and Hambrecht mean?

by I like old names

11/19/2021, 7:33 AM

While I was doing research on genealogy, I came across my granduncle's American wife's great great grandmother's maiden name: Hambright. It seemed like an interesting surname to me, so I then found her oldest ancestor, a guy in Germany whose surname was Hambrecht.

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#Hambrecht #Hambright

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- Lepic (guest) +1

11/19/2021, 7:41 AM

Hambright is an Americanization of the German name Hambrecht from the ancient Germanic personal name Haginberht, a compound of hagin ‘enclosure, protected place’ and berht ‘bright, famous’.

- thegriffon

11/22/2021, 1:33 PM

This *hagin is merely the genitive of *hago which in other areas appears as Hage-or Haghe- in names. High German commonly reducing the nominative to Hag fairly early may have produced this use of the oblique declension to give the required length. The normal derivation of Ham- is Haim- "village, settlement" (the diphthong is long so only one syllable required). A seperate hamm/ham "enclosure" appears unrelated to *hago, and it's geographical provenance more restricted.

This message was edited 11/22/2021, 2:07 PM

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