Stoutenburgh
Hi,
I post a lot on the First Names site, I am doing an ecology project looking at how ethnicity affects lifespan. Part of this project is figuring out what ethnicity certain last names are. Your database is helping greatly however Stoutenburgh was not in there, I was wondering if any of you had any idea what its origin might be. Your best guess is good enough for me right now, i can do more research from there.
thanks
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Stoutenburgh and all its variants (Van Stoutenburg, Stoutenberg, Stoltenberg, Stolzenberg) derive back from the castle Stoutenburg near Amersfoort. Although it wasn't finished, Wouter van Amersfoort already gave it to the Bishop of Utrecht (Hendrik van Vianden). This happened on the 12th of June in the year 1259, the same day on which the city Amersfoort got its city rights from also Bishop Hendrik van Vianden. As the family Van Amersfoort was a very important family hailing from Amersfoort, this all smells like a sort of deal between Wouter van Amersfoort and the Bishop.
The castle doesn't exist anymore, but at its place there can be found a house (a big house, that is).

The meaning of the name Stoutenburg falls apart in two: stout and burg . The latter has the meaning of 'fortress', like the nowadays Dutch word burcht . The first component nowadays has the meaning of 'bad, naughty', but the Dutch word stoutmoedig ( moedig means 'brave') shows us an altered meaning. In fact, etymologically there is a connection with the German word stolz , which means 'proud'. The Dutch stout used to mean something like 'proud' as well (or 'self-assured').
This meaning is the same in the Dutch surname De Stoute , which refers to a characteristic of the first bearer.

important: stout didn't mean 'brave', like Anon. said. And stoutmoedig means 'very brave'.
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Just a shot in the dark, ...I'd say "large town" ...burgh is obvious, but 'Stouten' is a bit more challenging ...usually the final -en is just a definite article like "the" ...stout, I'm guessing from the English may mean big or something similar ...
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Stout means naughty in modern Dutch, but the older meaning is brave.
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Hi, the name is Dutch in origin and seems to come from the name Van Stoutenburgh. It was brought to America by immigrants so I think there's a lot of American genealogy sites with info on it. I can give you a link to the associations site:
http://www.stoutenburgh.com/family_history.htm


Hope that helps, Lora.
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