Re: Meaning of the Name Katzenberger
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In reply to:
Meaning of the Name Katzenberger
1/29/01
Dear Mr. McNulty,
because my grandfather´s name is Katzenberger too, I was also interested in the origin of this name. According to the "DUDEN" lexicon of family names there are two possibilities:
1. a name to point out the origin from a certain village or city. You can find villages/cities named "Katzenberg" in the german federal states "Sachsen" (saxonia) and "Hessen", and also in Austria. There is also a town "Katzenberge" in the formerly german East Prussia, wich belongs to Poland today.
2. the adoption of the name of the residence or the environs
(in earlier times residential homes used to have own names)
-> it could be, that the name of your ancestors relates to this peak or mountain called "Katzen"
(the mention of a name in this lexicon is a indication of a widespread name)
Additional to this I want to give you a short explanation of the german words in this name:
"Katze" means cat, "Katzen" is the plural => cats, "Berg" means montain, "Berge" is the plural, the ending -er in "Katzenberger" means, that someone is from (or one of) "Katzenberg" (the same with the -n in your language: If you´re from America you´re an American).
So the explanation from David Katzenberger of the "-en-" between "Katz-" and "-berger" as the english "on" is wrong. It´s only the plural ending of "Katze". A good translation of "Katzenberg" would be "montain of cats" and of "Katzenberger""somebody from the montain of cats".
Until the 18th and 19th century jewisch people had no family names. At the beginning of the 19th century they were forced by government to created them. Very often they just took a gentile name or created a last name just like the nonjewish citizens did before or transformed hebrew words and names.
At this time it was up to date to create names with two nouns like "Rosenbaum" (rose, tree) "Rubinstein" (rubin, stone) or "Lilienfeld" (lily, field).
"Katzenberger" looks like this, but this name existed long before jews creaeted their names(gentile names developed in the 13th-15th centuries).
Yours sincerly, A. Rindt