What is the meaning of the last name Dieterlien ? My spelling may be off a little. Please HELP!?

I believe that is the origional spelling. The Americanized version is Ditterline. It may be German, Russian, or somewhere in that region. Looking for serious answers please.

What is the meaning of the last name Dieterlien ? My spelling may be off a little. Please HELP!?
I think you may have more luck with the spelling Dieterlen or Dieterlin. In any event, it looks like the surname is of German origin, with most signs pointing to the Baden-Wurttemberg area if you do a google search of those spellings and take a look at some online family trees. It also appears to have been derived from the forename "Dieter". I would suggest going to your local library or archives and see if they have any books on German surnames. I also have a somewhat rare name and have only found out my surname's true history through books. Hope some of this helps!
Reply:Hope you'll notice this ~ the suffix "lein" in German apparently means "small", so maybe small warrior? Here's a page with various suffixes including -lein.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... Report Abuse

Reply:Oh, and I suppose like the 2nd last poster mentioned, "small" could also mean "young" which would probably make more sense. Report Abuse

Reply:My experience with German surnames differs a bit from what's been posted. First, the idea that someone just randomly grabbed a name and wrote it down at Ellis Island is a greatly exaggerated story. Every German immigrant was required to get an exit visa before ever boarding a ship or crossing national boundaries. Germans were METICULOUS record keepers (one of Hitler's downfalls in fact).





When the emigrant arrived in Hamburg or Rotterdam to board a ship, s/he presented the passport to the steamship company and information was copied from that onto the ship's manifest. When the ship arrived in NYC it was presented to the harbor master or to the commissioner of the Port Authority and passenges were given tags with their names on them matching them to their line on the ship's manifest. Prior to 1892, all ships disembarked at the Battery and those records are at www.castlegarden.org. After 1892, some still disembarked at the Battery, but the majority went through Ellis Island (only the rich going through the Battery).





What's important in understanding this is that when someone went to apply for citizenship after 1905, they had to provide the name of the ship upon which they entered the country and their passport from Germany had to be surrendered. Discrepancies in names were not accepted. You had to use your given name from your documents and that's what was checked, not what someone wrote down on a roll at Ellis Island.





So this idea that "they changed our name in Ellis Island" doesn't hold much water (except for the Italians and Africans where they didn't have passports to surrender and they often couldn't get past dialectic problems to properly spell their names.)





The reality is that Dieterlein is a very common German name meaning "young Dieter". And you have the origins of the name Dieter. The rest is all hooey with little substance.
Reply:Ah, he led the three Musketeers!
Reply:http://www.last-names.net/surname.asp?su...





there's a place where you can email them at the bottom of the page....the site didn't yield any hits, though
Reply:Dieter is a boy's name, in Germany. Dieterlien means 'little Dieter' in the affectionate sense (not as in physically small) and this is something a parent would call a child.


When people came to America, especially prior to WW1, many of the foreign names were a mystery to the immigration officials, and they simply wrote down whatever they thought they heard. In our family, cousins spell the family name in eight different ways, thanks to various immigration officers!


If your family came from Germany, it is possible that one of the children was refered to as "Dieterlein" and the official wrote that down. As most of the immigrants could not read English (at that time, the German language had its own script, and did not use English letters) they would not have known the difference. By the time they realized what had been written down, the name had likely been in use for some time and it would have been both difficult and expensive to change it, so they simply left it as it was, and it became that child's surname.
Reply:it means big fat lesbian if im correct
Reply:its a french word ,dartanian but i hve no idea wat it means
Reply:Sounds German. Try "Dieterlein".





Here's a great link with someone who did some research on this already --should be helpful:





http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ILM...





Here's a quote from that page:


"Ditterline is a German name. The thing to remember here


is that Germany has not been a country much more than 100 years. It is


contrived of about 17 original principalities. The naturalization papers


for 2 of Hubby's grandfathers, Rodenberg being one of them, tells that they


were from the Kingdom of Hanover, the city of Diepenau. The point here is


that Diepenau is in Northern-most Germany now. It is near Denmark. That


is something to think about."

night jasmine