Family name origins & meanings
- German (northern and central) and Jewish (western Ashkenazic) : habitational name from the city of Hildesheim or from any of several places named Hillesheim in Hesse and the Rhineland. The place name is probably from the genitive case of a personal name derived from a short form of the various Germanic compound names with a first element hild ‘strife’, ‘battle’ + Old High German heim ‘homestead’.