German Surname Questions: Angen Endt, Tho Deffte

[Girl57]

I am completely new to Germany genealogy. Have found early 17th-century ancestors born in far western Germany, near border of Netherlands.

Some of the names sound Dutch to me: Terluhnen, Haeffackers, and I'm especially curious about three others: Angen Endt, Tho Deffte, and Toh Eck. Have seen "Angen" and "Tho" or "Toh" before other primary name parts and don't know what these mean. Do they mean "of?" Is the primary name part a family name or a place name? Jinny Wallerstedt

[taf]

On Sunday, May 17, 2020 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-7, Girl57 wrote:
> I am completely new to Germany genealogy. Have found early 17th-century ancestors born in far western Germany, near border of Netherlands.
>
> Some of the names sound Dutch to me: Terluhnen, Haeffackers, and I'm especially curious about three others: Angen Endt, Tho Deffte, and Toh Eck. Have seen "Angen" and "Tho" or "Toh" before other primary name parts and don't know what these mean. Do they mean "of?" Is the primary name part a family name or a place name? Jinny Wallerstedt

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have a woman with the surname or toponym (or whatever it is) 'to Pie' in Osnabruck in the early 19th century that became the surname Topie.

taf

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Sunday, May 17, 2020 at 10:50:20 AM UTC-4, Girl57 wrote:
> I am completely new to Germany genealogy. Have found early 17th-century ancestors born in far western Germany, near border of Netherlands.
>
> Some of the names sound Dutch to me: Terluhnen, Haeffackers, and I'm especially curious about three others: Angen Endt, Tho Deffte, and Toh Eck. Have seen "Angen" and "Tho" or "Toh" before other primary name parts and don't know what these mean. Do they mean "of?" Is the primary name part a family name or a place name? Jinny Wallerstedt

My guess (having grown up in that part of Germany, though that was a long time ago) is that "Tho" is the local variant of present-day German "zu" (and present-day Dutch "te" and "ter"), which means "of" or "at" (and is a cognate of the English preposition "to"). At least among German noble families, "von" was followed by a family name, while "zu" was strictly followed by a toponym (the place they were actually living) - see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelspr%C3%A4dikat#Deutschland

[Andrew Lancaster]

Also my first guess. I then did some googling and find this old Low German text for example: https://books.google.be/books?id=TsVXAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT68

Spellings with "th" are not used much anymore though, so that might be why that spelling does not appear here, while "to" does: http://www.niederdeutsche-literatur.de/

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Sunday, May 17, 2020 at 4:50:20 PM UTC+2, Girl57 wrote:
> I am completely new to Germany genealogy. Have found early 17th-century ancestors born in far western Germany, near border of Netherlands.
>
> Some of the names sound Dutch to me: Terluhnen, Haeffackers, and I'm especially curious about three others: Angen Endt, Tho Deffte, and Toh Eck. Have seen "Angen" and "Tho" or "Toh" before other primary name parts and don't know what these mean. Do they mean "of?" Is the primary name part a family name or a place name? Jinny Wallerstedt

Just to keep guessing, I am thinking Endt and Eck are most likely pointing to small toponyms. Eck might be an Oak for example. So the "to" might be like the medieval English "atte".

[Enno Borgsteede]

Op 17-05-2020 om 22:56 schreef Andrew Lancaster:

Angen Endt comes from Aen gen Endt, and means "at the end", where the end may be the end of a road, or an area, or the other end of a village. It might be that "gen" comes from the old Dutch "gene" which means "the other" as a sort of opposite.

Here's a famous Dutchman with this name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henk_Angenent

Eck sounds like modern German Ecke, which means corner, and might again refer to a road, or an area.

I can't make anything of Deffte though.

Regards,

Enno