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Old September 23rd, 2013 #5
Alex Linder
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E. Linder and Lindner

The two surnames, Linder and Lindner, are frequently confused. In response to my inquiry, Dr. Winfried Breidbach, Namenberatung, Gesellschaft fur deutsche Sprache (Name Consultation, Society for Germany Language), Wiesbaden, Germany kindly sent me information, including the following:

"Origin: both Lindner and Linder are formed with suffix -er marking the relaton to the basic word:

Linden + er = Lindener = shortened almost regularly = Lindner, Lintner, Lindtner.

Lind, Linde, Linda + -er = Linder".

"Concerning the original meaning of Lindner and Linder denoting a person there are two possibilties:

1. Linder, Lindner denotes a person who has residence "by or near a lime tree" ((bei der) Linde singular), "by or near a couple or a wood of lime trees" ((bei den) Linden plural).

2. Linder, Lindner denotes a person who came from a place or town called Lind, Linda, Linde, Linden, Lindenau etc. (each of these variants of place names existed/exists frequently).

In case of a given family, there is no way to verify one of these two possibilities (except that old documents give explicit evidence)."

Since linden trees are widespread over the German-speaking areas considered here, one might expect Linder and Lindner distributions to be similar. However, a study of surnames in German-speaking cities by Brechenmacher (1957), based on 1930 data, shows that each name has an area of dominance with relatively little overlap. In general, Linder is dominant in southern Germany and Switzerland and Lindner is dominant in eastern Germany and adjacent areas of Poland. The boundary area runs east-west about the latitude of Frankfurt. My study of current (2000) telephone listings gives generally similar results. (p. 6)