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ArchivesRe: Eitel? (Male, Germanic)
in reply to a message by Anthony
The German vocabulary word "eitel" nowadays means "conceited", but also "mere". In the Middle Ages it was used in the sense of "pure", and this is the original meaning of the name. Later (beginning at the end of the 14th century) it was used together with another forename, now meaning "only". So Eitelfritz would mean that the bearer of this name had only one given name (Fritz).
(This is taken from; Rosa und Volker Kohlheim, Das große Vornamenlexikon, Mannheim 2003)
(This is taken from; Rosa und Volker Kohlheim, Das große Vornamenlexikon, Mannheim 2003)
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Replies
Interesting, Andy! Here in South Africa, Eitel is occasionally used as a given name and pronounced A-tel (the A being the vowel in hay or MAbel).
Quite a few German names are used here - we had some German immigrants in the mid-19th century during a period of unemployment back home, and they left placenames like Hamburg and Berlin, and some given names as well. And then there were also some Lutheran missionaries ... but which of them would have used Eitel, I do not know, and until our records get computerised I won't find out!
I've only seen it used here by Afrikaans speakers, hence the unGerman pronunciation.
Quite a few German names are used here - we had some German immigrants in the mid-19th century during a period of unemployment back home, and they left placenames like Hamburg and Berlin, and some given names as well. And then there were also some Lutheran missionaries ... but which of them would have used Eitel, I do not know, and until our records get computerised I won't find out!
I've only seen it used here by Afrikaans speakers, hence the unGerman pronunciation.
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