Hey. Each time I've seen your Defence Minister Boris Pistorius name come up in the news, it gives me a smile as he could very easily be a Lithuanian by his surname (take EU Defence Minister, Lithuanian Andrius Kubilius). I've looked into slightly and internet says there's no knowledge of any Lithuanian roots for Pistorius. So it makes me curious about this coincidence.

How common are surnames ending in IUS in Germany? Is there any specific region where they "come from"? Curious what those historical ties could be interpreted 🙂

Edit:
Thanks folks! Learned something today about Latinisation. Apparently in our case it goes back all the way to Lithuanian Grand Duchy (13th century), later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until just before 19th century), then of course Tsar&Soviet russia with their russification efforts tried to eradicate such surnames 🙄… In part for their link to Catholic religion and (especially Tsar) russia trying to outright ban non-Orthodox religion or at least heavily surpress it.

But nonetheless some of those surnames still persist to this day. Thanks all ☺️


8 comments

  1. Not Germany but surnames ending with ius or eus are not uncommon in Sweden. Usually constructed to sound a bit like Latin. 

  2. Could be wrong, but I think it’s a Dutch name, actually. There was a time in our history when it was hip to make your surname sound Latin, either by translation or by adding a Latin sounding suffix. Think Erasmus.
    I don’t know if it was a fad outside of the Netherlands as well though.

  3. Who else comes tomond is Loris Karius (goalkeeper) and Otto Carius (WW2 tanker). If i recall correctly the ending -ius here is a sign that a name was latinised some time in the past. Few centuries it was maybe en vouge to have a Latin version of ones last name. For example the delatinised version of his last name would be Bäcker. So Baker in english.

  5. Pistor is Latin for “baker” or “miller”. It used to be relatively common (several hundred years ago) for academics to translate their name into Latin or Greek. Boris Pistorius probably has ancestors that originally had the last name Becker, Beck, Müller or something similar.

  7. Thanks folks! Learned something today about Latinisation. Apparently in our case it goes back all the way to Lithuanian Grand Duchy (13th century), later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until just before 19th century), then of course Tsar&Soviet russia with their russification efforts tried to eradicate such surnames 🙄… In part for their link to Catholic religion and (especially Tsar) russia trying to outright ban non-Orthodox religion or at least heavily surpress it.

    But nonetheless some of those surnames still persist to this day. Thanks all ☺️

  8. As others have said, “Pistorius” or “Pistor” is the latinised form of “Baker”. Latinised surnames was a thing in the Renaissance in Germany and the Low Countries. You have names like Molitor (Miller), Pescator / Pescatorius (Fisher), Faber (Smith), Mercator (for Krämer / Cremer – merchant) or Praetorius (for Schultze / Richter – judge).

    In some cases Greek is used instead of Latin, like Neander (Neumann) or Melanchthon (Schwartzerdt).

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