Any information on the surname Von Hiltz and its history?

Question

Its on my mom's dad's side (Hill), and i dont know how far back it goes untill they had the name changed to Hill (from Von Hiltz). Any answers??? I dont know who came from Germany.. :(

Answer 1

"von" means one of your ancestors was a member of nobility. Now don't confuse nobility with royalty, but no one in Germany or Austria could use "von" without legitimately be nobility. If you can do a couple of generations of research and find out where your family was living 100 years ago, we can do more to help you find out when the family came to the US and when. It's also possible we can find out where they were from in Germany or Austria.

Answer 2

Hiltz  

Last name origin & meaning:

Altered spelling of South German Hilz, a variant of Hild.

Von literally means 'from' and usually it signified nobility, and should be spelled with a small v "von".

In Germany, there is the distinction between historic nobility (historischer Adel), i.e. knighted by a king or the Emperor and the citizen nobility (Bürgeradel), which derived their von from the pure description of a place of origin, e.g. Klaus Schmied von Ehringen (Klaus the Smith from Ehringen).

Historic nobility has the right to abreviate the von as v. (e.g. Lothar Freiherr v.Richthofen), whereas the citizen nobilty has to spell out the "von".

In Switzerland, von is mostly a description of place of origin, as from 1191 onwards,  nobody could elevate anyone to the rank of nobility. The few exceptions are immigrants or locals knighted by foreign powers outside the Swiss Federation (e.g. von Habsburg).

In Austria, "von" can mean either a place of origin or nobility.

HANNIE !  THIS MIGHT INTEREST YOU !!!!!!

The Hiltz family of Nova Scotia came from Ortenberg, Grafschaft Stolberg-Roßla.   Today descendants of Heinrich and Daniel Hiltz are found throughout Canada and the United States.

http://genealogy-paulsen.com/Nova_Scotia...

http://genealogy-paulsen.com/Nova_Scotia...

Answer 3

Finding documentation is the basic thing that you need.

http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

By using solid records, you can verify when they did immigrate, and in many cases, you CAN locate documentation of their exact origins. It is also possible that the name was NOT changed from anything.. family traditions are not always accurate.

Either way.. it is not that hard to trace, and find valid records.