04 December 2011

Uncommon Names Are Relative

One of my wife's ancestral surnames is Schollmeyer. Not the most common last name in Davenport, Iowa. In the village in Germany where they were from, the parish register of births contained numerous entries for that last name. In fact, in some years 1/3 of the entries had the father with the last name of Schollmeyer or the mother with that maiden name.

1 comment:

  1. Very true; My surname name is very rare in my home state of Mississippi, however in Germany it is as common as Smith or Jones!

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