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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : habitational name for someone from any of various places, for example in Saxony, Upper Franconia, the Upper Palatinate, and Upper Austria, called Wildenau, from Old High German wildi ‘wild’, ‘uncultivated’ (with the adjective retaining the weak dative ending originally used after a preposition and article) + ouwa ‘wet land’, ‘marsh’.
  • Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : habitational name from Yiddish vilner ‘native or inhabitant of the Lithuanian city of Vilnius’ (Yiddish Vilne).

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