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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : occupational name for an iron worker who flattened out the metal into sheets, from an agent derivative of Middle High German gelīchen ‘to smooth or even out’.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : from the inflected form of German gleich ‘same’, one of names from vocabulary words that were selected at random by government officials when surnames were made compulsory.

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