Why don't sites list my Turkish/German last name?

Well last time i asked this someone said that it was phonetically impossible, I don't think so. The name Baehler is composed of Baeh + ler. Baeh means White and the ler suffix signifies "They Are". I don't get it. Sometimes i think genealogical sites are wrong.

Why don't sites list my Turkish/German last name?
Yea a lot of times they are..sorry =/
Reply:You are right, that SOME "genealogical" sites are inaccurate, since they use generalities, and their main focus is to sell a product.


There ARE scholarly sources of background on the process of how surnames evolved. You can run into problems if you try to do literal translations between one language and another. Or, if someone is trying to use phonetics to define the origin of a name.


Name origin and word origin are not the same, and do not follow the same rules. If you attempt to impose "word origin" standards onto surnames, you leave yourself wide open for mistakes.





http://members.tripod.com/~Genealogy_Inf...


there is a discussion group that focuses solely on origins of names that you may find of interest
Reply:An interesting thing happened when I search immigration records for that spelling of that name. It's not exactly German. Most who came to the US with that name were from Switzerland. They speak a dialect of German in the north that uses slightly different inflections and spellings than do the Germans and Austrians. Think of it as the different between the Queen's English and all the different American dialects. When I pulled the name from the American Dictionary of Names, it claims that it is a "habitational surname" for someone from a certain region in Saxony, which is very near the Swiss border. So it's very possible that your family relocated at some point between 1400-1500 when surnames started to come into use in that region and that's why the family was identified by where they came from. It's much like Louis Pasteur having a name that means that his family lived near the pasteur or Irving Berlin having a name showing that his family came from Berlin.
Reply:They're all a bunch of dumbasses.