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Help[Surname] Re: German surname SCHEWHM / SCHWEMM
in reply to a message by thegriffon
This may very well be. So if you can find any evidence for a connection between schweifen and sweimen, I'd be gald to learn more about this.
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After more research the connection appears to be ancient — G. schweifen and MHG. sweimen seem to be cognates, along with schweben, Ice. svifa, sveima, svima and English swim in the phrase "made my/his/her head swim". The word meaning "flood" you refer to above is probably just another application of the root — it seems to have described the fast swooping, sweeping, soaring, wandering, dizzying flight of a bird, and then by analogy and extension to the movement of flames, fast flowing water, scythes, brooms, people etc.
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Thank you very much for the explanation. Your obvious expertise makes me wonder, what your sources may be, as mine have apparently failed.
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http://archive.org/stream/etymologicaldict00kluguoft
https://indo-european.info/pokorny-etymological-dictionary/index.htm
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html
http://www.bosworthtoller.com/
Since MHG sweimen has no descendant in standard German (it may survive in a different branch of High German), the comparative method is helpful. Cleasby, Pokorny, Kluge et al are all a bit dated and don't always agree, but there's not much else available for High German. Much of the OHG corpus is a different dialect to the precursor of standard German or the MHG corpus anyway, so it can be a bit of a strain finding a cognate Middle or Old High German word that resembles a modern word semantically, and surnames may come from a dialect that isn't well represented in a German-English or even a thorough German dictionary.
Schwemm with double mm should be an ablaut grade of schwimmen, probably with umlaut (according to Kluge it's the factitive, i.e. causative — OE has swemman, Danish svømme), but with surnames that can't be relied on, and I don't know how the vowel would vary with different dialects (and some dialects seem to use a different orthography than standard German for the same phonemes).
https://indo-european.info/pokorny-etymological-dictionary/index.htm
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html
http://www.bosworthtoller.com/
Since MHG sweimen has no descendant in standard German (it may survive in a different branch of High German), the comparative method is helpful. Cleasby, Pokorny, Kluge et al are all a bit dated and don't always agree, but there's not much else available for High German. Much of the OHG corpus is a different dialect to the precursor of standard German or the MHG corpus anyway, so it can be a bit of a strain finding a cognate Middle or Old High German word that resembles a modern word semantically, and surnames may come from a dialect that isn't well represented in a German-English or even a thorough German dictionary.
Schwemm with double mm should be an ablaut grade of schwimmen, probably with umlaut (according to Kluge it's the factitive, i.e. causative — OE has swemman, Danish svømme), but with surnames that can't be relied on, and I don't know how the vowel would vary with different dialects (and some dialects seem to use a different orthography than standard German for the same phonemes).
This message was edited 7/22/2018, 6:39 AM
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Thanks a lot, this was very helpful!
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