Family name origins & meanings
- German and Jewish (western Ashkenazic) : regional name for someone from Alsace (German Elsass, Yiddish Elzes), with the suffix -er indicating a native or inhabitant of a place. The name of the region (first attested in Latin documents in the form Alisatia) has traditionally been derived from Old High German ali ‘other’, ‘foreign’ + saz ‘seat’, ‘possession’, but Bahlow traces the first element back to a river name Ill or Ell.