Family name origins & meanings
- North German : probably a nickname meaning ‘roaring lion’, or a habitational name from a house bearing the sign of a roaring lion, from an altered form of Middle Low German brüllen ‘to roar’ + leve ‘lion’.
- Five Brümleve brothers came to North America from Lengerich, near Lingen, Emsland, Germany in 1846–51. Two of them settled in Teutopolis, IL, and three in Louisville, KY. Other members of the family, also from Emsland, settled in St. Louis, and Americanized the name by spelling it as Bruemleve.