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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German (Silesia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Austria) : from Middle High German metze, a small dry-measure for grain or flour, hence a metonymic occupational name for a maker of measures or for a miller’s assistant (who measured the quantity of flour due to the miller as payment in kind).
  • South German : occupational name for a butcher, from an agent derivative of Middle High German metzjen, metzigen ‘to butcher’.
  • German : habitational name for someone from Metzen in Lower Bavaria.

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