Family name origins & meanings
- German : from German klein ‘small’ + Dienst ‘service’, an occupational name for a farmhand or laborer who was second in line to a more highly paid class of servant (see also Kleinknecht). The term also denoted a particular kind of tax levied in the Middle Ages, hence the surname may be a metonymic name for a collector of such taxes or for someone who had to pay such a tax.