Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : topographic name for someone who lived on the fringe of a village or settlement, from the oblique case of Middle High German ort in the sense ‘tip’, ‘extremity’ (see Ort 3) + the suffix -er, denoting an inhabitant. In the Austrian Tyrol the name denoted a person who worked in a salt mine.