[Civsoc-mw] Scholars in Germany began to translate their surnames into Latin or Greek

[Tony Thontholani]

In the 16th century, with the rise of humanism and the rediscovery of classical culture, scholars in Germany began to translate their surnames into Latin or Greek.

As one scholar (Eckhard Bernstein) puts it:

"The need to set themselves off from the profanum vulgus showed itself most clearly in the Latinization, and to a lesser degree Grecization, of proper names for it signified an initiation into an exclusive European community of scholars. And just as a novice often adopted a different name upon entering a monastery to mark the importance of his or her decision, so the humanists assumed a new name to celebrate their entrance into the lay order." 

Thus Luther's friend and collaborator Philipp Schwartzerdt (which he interpreted as meaning "black-earth") Greeked his name to Melanchthon. Georg Bauer ("farmer"), the naturalist, became Georgius Agricola; the pencil-making family that had been Schmidt ("smith") became Faber; and the map-maker Gerhard Kremer ("shopkeeper") signed his maps Mercator.

An intellectual named Neumann (just what it sounds like in English, "new man") turned the name to Greek as Neander. It stuck, and his grandson was Joachim Neander, who, after an idle youth, found religion and discovered a talent for hymn-writing.

He was the "sweet singer" of the Reformed church, and while working as rector of the Latin school at Düsseldorf in the 1670s he was inspired by the lovely, steep, rocky valley of the little river Düssel east of the city. Some of his hymns were said to have been composed in one of the limestone caves along the valley (shown in the painting).

Church music doesn't make much of a show on the pop charts nowadays, but once upon a time hymns were cherished things of beauty, and the best of them were embraced across the map of Protestant sects. Neander's were among them.

After his early death in 1680 and the rise of his fame and life story, the locals began to give his name to the river gorge -- Neanderthal, with German tal or thal, meaning "valley," a cognate of English DALE (it is also, via another valley on the far side of the German map, the source of DOLLAR).

Regrettably for natural beauty and Neader's memory, the limestone in the valley was commercially valuable, and in the 19th century miners were hacking away at it, penetrating and destroying the caves and the scenery.

In August 1856 a landowner in the valley found bones and fragments in the pile of detritus after Italian workers had dug out one of the old caves for a limestone mine. He figured it was pieces from a cave-bear, and gave them to a local teacher and fossil collector, but someone soon recognized them as human remains, unlike anything then living.

The rest of the story is well-known. By the 1860s the new man identified by the fossils was named Neanderthal. Eventually he took his place in human evolution -- modern man's nearest dead cousin, adapted to life in Europe and western Asia during the depths of the last great Ice Age, extinct from about 40,000 years ago.

Like us, a tool-maker and fire-user, a skilled hunter and maker of clothes and objects that must have had symbolic or ornamental purpose. Perhaps he sang. That they interbred with modern humans was long debated and denied, but DNA analysis settled the question in 2013: They did.

[Text: Harper]