• Soviet Pigeon@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    According to wikitionary:

    Wohnstättenname zu mittelhochdeutsch ecke, egge „Ecke, Winkel“ (oberdeutsch Egg), also für jemanden, der an einer Ecke, an einem Vorsprung wohnt.

    The genesis of this name is not that important I think. However! Arriving in Germany decades ago the pronunciation on “n” in Schwarzenegger maked far more sense to me. I thought it is a typical german thing, so far, that even their surnames where racist. On the top adding Schwarz(e), meaning black, I really thought this surname is peak of racism. But I accepted it, because I and many also thought: “That’s how Germans probably are and they are maybe also missing Hitler”.

    Many years later, when I searched stuff regarding building up muscles, there was a guy with the surname Waxenegger, who claimed to be a former porn start or whatever. Since he did the right pronunciation, I needed time to process it, because I thought so wrong about people from Switzerland, Austria and Germany lol.

    • REEEEvolution@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      Oh noice, family name origins are always fun to learn. As for german naming conventions, yeah stuff’s wild sometimes. It is easy to forget how much the german language changed over time.