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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : from Middle High German strāle ‘flash of lightning’, ‘strip of land’; it may have been a nickname from the first sense, but appears more generally to have derived from the second sense, as a topographic name or from a field name.
  • German (Strähl) : metonymic occupational name for a comb maker, from Middle High German stæl ‘comb’.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : ornamental name from Yiddish shtral or German Strahl ‘ray of light’, ‘sunbeam’.

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