If you have ancesters from these places in Germany, what are their last names and are they of slavic origin.?

Question

Places: Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Bradenburg, Berlin, or Saxony. When I say "are they" I mean "are the last names". Please state the place where your ancestor/s came from. Also If anyone has a German last name of slavic origin not from these places, please list the last name and the place where your ancestor/s came from. I have two German last names of Slavic origin in my family tree from the 1820s and such: Rossow (mecklenburg) and Tetzlaff (probably Mecklenburg), and these are the only ties I have to eastern Germany, besides Bavaria.

Answer 1

Your ties to anywhere will not be dependent on a surname.. but on factual records of where they actually came from.

Answer 2

You're right, these names are of Slavic origin.They derived from the Obotrites, who were and still are at home in nowadays Eastern Germany. Like the Teutonic tribes in the west they became a most important group of German ancestors. Their old languages, however, are completely forgotten, with the exception of names - but they all have been germanized more and more. Researchers have a hard time to find out how they were spoken and what they were meaning originally.

Ancestry com. has tried to explain the names Tetzlaff and Rossow as good as possible, anyway:

http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Rossow-fam...

http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Tetzlaff-f...

If you want to find some more Slavic German names, it will help you to look for their characteristical endings: -ow, -in, -nz, -tz.

The link below will show you the spreading of all German last names you want to know about.

http://christoph.stoepel.net/Geogen-loca...