Primary Surnames in our Genealogy
Database:
Click on the surname link below to view the
meaning:
Benawa, Cooper,
Flatt, Getman, Harley,
Jibson, Kraft, Martin,
Sicard, Stafford, Taylor,
and Younger
Although we have more than 1,600 different surnames on Family
Thread.com; they derive from our primary family history lines of
Kraft, Benawa, Jibson, Younger, Sicard, Thompson, Martin, Stafford,
Harley, Flatt and Getman Family primary surnames.
The primary geographical locations for the Kraft family is Ansbach,
Bavaria, Germany; Waterloo, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; Kent County,
Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; and Indianapolis, Indiana. Some
other interesting related Indiana families include the McMillen family
of Seymour, Indiana formerly of Bedford, Indiana; as well as the Mills
Family who are tied to both our Kraft and Younger family lines.
The Younger Family gang originated in Glasgow, Scotland, migrating to
Maryland and Virginia and then on to North Carolina; Kentucky,
Missouri and Kansas. The Jibson family is from Hive,
Yorkshire, England with one member migrating to Michigan and another
to Ontario, Canada. The Taylor family originated in
Northumberland, England migrating to the Mineral, Cherokee County,
Kansas during the great mining boom.
Our Stafford line has been in the United States before it was a
nation during Colonial times migrating from Virginia, North Carolina
and Gainesboro, Jackson County, Tennessee where our Martin, Harley and
Flatt family lines once lived as well (many are still in the
Cumberland River area in Middle Tennessee).
Click here for a
complete list of our surnames without a user id
kraft
German (also Kräft), Danish,
Swedish, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname for a strong man, from Old
High German kraft, German Kraft ‘strength’,
‘power’. The Swedish name probably originated as a soldier’s
name. In part the German and Danish names possibly also derive from a
late survival of the same word used as a byname, Old High German Chraft(o),
Old Norse Kraptr.
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martin
1.
English,
Scottish, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Czech, Slovak, Spanish (Martín),
Italian (Venice), etc.: from a personal name (Latin Martinus, a
derivative of Mars, genitive Martis, the Roman god of
fertility and war, whose name may derive ultimately from a root mar
‘gleam’). This was borne by a famous 4th-century saint, Martin of
Tours, and consequently became extremely popular throughout
Europe
in the Middle Ages. As a North American surname, this
form has absorbed many cognates from other European forms.
2.
English:
habitational name from any of several places so called, principally in
Hampshire, Lincolnshire, and Worcestershire, named in Old English as
‘settlement by a lake’ (from mere or mær
‘pool’, ‘lake’ + tun ‘settlement’) or as
‘settlement by a boundary’ (from (ge)mære ‘boundary’ +
tun ‘settlement’). The place name has been charged from Marton
under the influence of the personal name Martin.
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stafford
English:
habitational name from any of the various places in
England
so called, which do
not all share the same etymology. The county seat of Staffordshire
(which is probably the main source of the surname) is named from Old
English stæð ‘landing place’ + ford ‘ford’.
Examples in Devon seem to have as their first element Old English stan
‘stone’, and one in Sussex is probably named with Old English steor
‘steer’, ‘bullock’.
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harley
1.
English
(now mainly in Scotland; also West Midlands and Welsh border):
habitational name from places in Shropshire and West Yorkshire, so
named from Old English hær ‘rock’, ‘heap of stones’ or
hara ‘hare’ + leah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’. In
some cases the name may be topographic.
2.
Irish:
when not of English origin, this is an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó
hEarghaile ‘descendant of Earghal’, a variant of the
personal name Fearghal without the initial F-
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flatt (from
vandervliet in the case of our Flatt family)
1.
English
(chiefly
East Anglia
): topographic name
for someone who lived on a flat, a patch of level or low-lying ground
(Old Norse flat, flot).
2.
South
German: variant of Flath.
Flath
1.
North
German: habitational name from a place or field named from Middle Low
German flad ‘flowing water in a bog’.
2.
German:
nickname from Middle High German vlat ‘cleanliness’,
‘neatness’, ‘beauty’, or from a personal name derived from
this word.
Vandervliet
Dutch
(Van der Vliet): topographic name for someone who lived by a stream,
Middle Dutch vliet.
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benawa (with
various spellings bennaway, beneway and benway)
benway
Americanized
spelling of French Benoit, reflecting the Canadian pronunciation,
which retains the diphthong wé that in metropolitan France was
replaced in the 17th century by the current wa.
benoit
French
(Benoît): from the personal name Benoit, French form of
Benedict.
Benedict
English
and Dutch: from the medieval personal name Benedict (Latin Benedictus
meaning ‘blessed’). This owed its popularity in the Middle Ages
chiefly to St. Benedict of Norcia (c.480–550), who founded
the Benedictine order of monks at Monte Cassino and wrote a monastic
rule that formed a model for all subsequent rules. No doubt the
meaning of the Latin word also contributed to its popularity as a
personal name, especially in Romance countries.
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sicard (various
spellings secord, sicord)
French,
Catalan, and Occitan: from the personal name Sicard, from
Germanic Sigihard (see Siegert).
Siegert
German:
from the Germanic personal name Sigihart, a compound of sigi
‘victory’ + hart ‘hard’.
secord
Origin
unidentified. Possibly an altered spelling of French Canadian Sicard
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jibson (various
spellings jepson, jepsen, gibson, gilbert)
jepson
1.
Americanized
spelling of Danish and North German Jepsen.
2.
English:
patronymic from a short form of Jeffrey.
Jepsen
Danish
and North German: patronymic from Jep(pe), a pet form of the
personal name Jakob (see Jacob).
Jeffrey
English:
from a Norman personal name that appears in Middle English as Geffrey
and in Old French as Je(u)froi. Some authorities regard this as
no more than a palatalized form of Godfrey, but early forms such as Galfridus
and Gaufridus point to a first element from Germanic gala
‘to sing’ or gawi ‘region’, ‘territory’. It is
possible that several originally distinct names have fallen together
in the same form.
Jacob
Jewish,
English, German, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and southern Indian:
derivative, via Latin Jacobus, from the Hebrew personal name ya‘aqobh
(Yaakov). In the Bible, this is the name of the younger twin
brother of Esau (Genesis 25:26), who took advantage of the latter’s
hunger and impetuousness to persuade him to part with his birthright
‘for a mess of potage’. The name is traditionally interpreted as
coming from Hebrew akev ‘heel’, and Jacob is said to have
been born holding on to Esau’s heel. In English Jacob and James
are now regarded as quite distinct names, but they are of identical
origin, and in most European languages the two names are not
distinguished. It is used as a given name among Christians in
India
, and in the
U.S.
has come to be used
as a surname among families from southern
India
.
Gibb
English:
from the common medieval personal name Gib, a short form of
Gilbert. This surname is also frequent in
Scotland
and
South Wales
.
Gilbert
1.
English
(of Norman origin), French, and North German: from Giselbert, a
Norman personal name composed of the Germanic elements gisil
‘pledge’, ‘hostage’, ‘noble youth’ (see Giesel)
+ berht ‘bright’, ‘famous’. This personal name enjoyed
considerable popularity in
England
during the Middle
Ages, partly as a result of the fame of St. Gilbert of Sempringham
(1085–1189), the founder of the only native English monastic order.
2.
Jewish
(Ashkenazic): Americanized form of one or more like-sounding Jewish
surnames.
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getman
Jewish
(from
Belarus
and
Ukraine
): nickname from
Russian getman ‘Cossack chief’, Polish hetman. See
Hetman.
Hetman
1.
Polish,
German (Hettmann), and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from Polish hetman
‘military leader’ (a derivative of German Hauptmann
‘captain’), a status name for a military officer or for the
elected leader of a community. In some cases, it may have been given
as a nickname. As a Jewish name it is generally ornamental; the
literal sense ‘military leader’ never applies.
2.
Frisian:
variant of Hett.
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younger
1.
English
(mainly Borders): from Middle English yonger ‘younger’,
hence a distinguishing name for, for example, the younger of two
bearers of the same personal name. In one case, at least, however, the
name is known to have been borne by an immigrant Fleming, and was
probably an Americanized form of Middle Dutch jongheer ‘young
nobleman’ (see Jonker).
2.
Americanized
spelling of various cognate or like-sounding names in other languages,
notably German Junger and Junker, or Dutch Jonker.
Jonker
Dutch
and North German: from Middle Dutch jonghheer ‘young
nobleman’ (a compound of jong(h) ‘young’ + herr
‘master’, ‘lord’). The term was used of a member of the
nobility who had not yet assumed knighthood.
Junger
1.
German
(Jünger): distinguishing name, from Middle High German jünger
‘younger’, for the younger of two bearers of the same personal
name, usually a son who bore the same name as his father. It is also
found in eastern
Slovenia
.
2.
German
and Jewish (Ashkenazic): descriptive nickname from Middle High German junger,
German Junger ‘young man’.
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cooper
1.
English:
occupational name for a maker and repairer of wooden vessels such as
barrels, tubs, buckets, casks, and vats, from Middle English couper,
cowper (apparently from Middle Dutch kuper, a derivative
of kup ‘tub’, ‘container’, which was borrowed
independently into English as coop). The prevalence of the
surname, its cognates, and equivalents bears witness to the fact that
this was one of the chief specialist trades in the Middle Ages
throughout
Europe
. In
America
, the English name
has absorbed some cases of like-sounding cognates and words with
similar meaning in other European languages, for example Dutch Kuiper.
2.
Jewish
(Ashkenazic): Americanized form of Kupfer and Kupper.
3.
Dutch:
occupational name for a buyer or merchant, Middle Dutch coper.
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taylor
English
and Scottish: occupational name for a tailor, from Old French tailleur
(Late Latin taliator, from taliare ‘to cut’). The
surname is extremely common in Britain and Ireland, and its numbers
have been swelled by its adoption as an Americanized form of the
numerous equivalent European names, most of which are also very common
among Ashkenazic Jews, for example Schneider, Szabó, and Portnov.
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Source for surnames:
Dictionary
of American Family Names,
Oxford
University
Press, ISBN
0-19-508137-4
