NamensArchiv explains where German and international surnames come from — free, no sign-up, and in language you can follow without a degree in linguistics.
Almost every surname in Germany arose between the 12th and 16th centuries — from an occupation, a place of origin, a father's name, a dwelling or a nickname. The knowledge about it sits in specialist onomastic literature, in church registers and in university projects. Hardly anyone gets at it unless they're already doing family research.
That is exactly the gap NamensArchiv closes: you enter your surname and within seconds you get a clear classification — name type, probable meaning, regional distribution, spelling variants and historical background. For the most common names there are also detailed, permanently published pages in our surname encyclopedia.
NamensArchiv is a project by Jan Ozeir from Berlin and is part of the publishing project Deutsche Chroniken, which has been releasing short videos on German history, onomastics and regional studies since 2025 and reaches around 86,000 people there. The name videos were the most requested part of that channel — so many messages asking "and what does mine mean?" that this website grew out of them.
Responsible for all content within the meaning of § 18 (2) MStV (German State Media Treaty) is Jan Ozeir. The full provider details are in the legal notice.
We provide onomastic classification: what the name means, which language area it comes from, which type of origin applies, where it occurs most often. That is something different from genealogy. We do not tell you whether you are related to a particular family, and we don't build family trees.
The reason is scholarly, not lazy: identical names in Germany almost always arose several times independently. There was no single original Müller, but thousands of mills and therefore thousands of Müller families with no kinship whatsoever. Anyone who promises otherwise is selling sentiment instead of research. How we work and which sources stand behind it is set out openly on our page Sources & Method.
Name research is completely free, with no account, no subscription, no forced newsletter. The project is funded in three ways: voluntary support from readers, two optional add-on products (a PDF certificate for €3.90 and a personal name video for €9.90) and advertising on the encyclopedia pages. No content on this site sits behind a paywall, and no ad blocks the result of your search.
Onomastics works with probabilities, not certainties. For many names, several plausible interpretations compete; we name the one most common in the specialist literature and label uncertainty as such. If you have documented knowledge about your name — from a local chronicle, a church register, a regional name collection — write to us via the contact page. Corrections are checked and the affected page is adjusted or removed.
And where does your name come from? Enter a surname, read its origin and meaning. Free, no sign-up — even for rare names. Research a name now