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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of ointments, from Middle High German salbe ‘ointment’, ‘salve’. The name also came to mean ‘flatterer’, ‘toady’.
  • German : nickname from Midle High German salwe ‘dark’ ‘sallow’, ‘dirty’.
  • German : variant of Salet(e)l, probably Austrian, also found in the Gottschee area in Slovenia.

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