Hello - and thank-you for asking about Beethoven's name.
Beethoven means beet farms or, if you are British, beetroot farms -
not in German but in Flemish. The composer's grandfather was the one
who moved the family to Germany. You'll see a map of this migration
and learn more about the Beethovens on the site where I found this
information:
"Where does the name van Beethoven come from?
Beet means 'beetroot' and Hoven is the plural of 'Hof', meaning
'farm'. Beethoven is therefore 'beetroot farms'."
Biography of Beethoven
http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Bio/BiographyFamily.html
Sometimes the 'hoven' part is translated as 'gardens' but this
dictionary of surnames explains that the name may have originally
referred to a patch of land that wasn't exactly farm or garden:
"The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks and Hodges) says [of]
Beethoven: Low German, Flemish, and Dutch habitation name from some
minor place named as the yard used for the cultivation of root crops,
from MLG, MDu. bete, beet + hoven dat. pl. (originally used after a
preposition such as van 'of') MLG, MDu. hov, yard, court"
Message about origins of Beethoven's name
http://www.ku.edu/~medieval/melcher/matthias/old/log.started941101/mail-8.html
There's more information on the name's origins in a discussion at the
rec.music.classical newsgroup:
"Van Beethoven is a Flemish name and there are still people named like
that in Flanders. Indeed, the full name is "Van Beethoven", like most
of the Flemish names it indicates a place of origin of the person. The
meaning is: a person living on a particular kind of farm "hof; plural:
hoven"."
newsgroup message
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=beethoven+meaning+name&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=361E2732.617AE62%40pc93.roc.wayne.edu&rnum=5
To check these statements, I used a Dutch dictionary since "to all
intents and purposes, Flemish and Dutch are the same language. "
Dutch translator's website
http://www.calvino.demon.co.uk/Dutch_Translation/flemish.html
The Travlang website will confirm that in modern Dutch 'hof' means
garden and 'hovenier' means gardener, also that 'beet' means beet when
it comes to beet sugar, though it may mean other root vegetables too!
Dutch-English dictionary available online at:
http://www.dictionaries.travlang.com
Thanks for asking an interesting question. Please let me know if you
need any clarification.
Regards - Leli
search terms used:
Beethoven meaning name biography
Flemish Dutch beet hoven hof |
