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In some cases, even an existing non-noble von became noble, or vice versa, therefore the same surname sometimes would be shared by noble and non-noble individuals. Especially in the Northwest (Bremen, Hamburg, Holstein, Lower Saxony, Schleswig, Westphalia) and in German-speaking Switzerland, von is a frequent element in non-noble surnames. [1]
Prominent non-noble families having used particles are von Cappelen, von der Lippe, and de Créqui dit la Roche. The preposition til (English: to , but translates as of ; comparable with German zu ) is placed behind a person's full name in order to denote his or her place of residence, for example Sigurd Jonsson til Sudreim .
von – "of", "from"; often a sign of nobility, but also just a geographical term of the name originated of a location. zu - ( German ) "at"; a sign of nobility, sometimes in the combination von und zu , meaning the noble family still owns the place of naming
The inflation of fake nobility is one of the major concerns of the Adelsrechtsausschuss, and it is up to the commission to determine whether a person should be considered noble or non-noble. For instance, the German-American businessman Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt was born as Hans Robert Lichtenberg in Germany.
In German personal names, von is a preposition which approximately means 'of' or 'from' and usually denotes some sort of nobility.While von (always lower case) is part of the family name or territorial designation, not a first or middle name, if the noble is referred to by their last name, use Schiller, Clausewitz or Goethe, not von Schiller, etc.
The preposition von ("of") was used to distinguish nobility; for example, if someone was baron of the village of Veltheim, his family name would be von Veltheim. In modern times, people who were elevated to nobility often had a 'von' added to their name. For example, Johann Wolfgang Goethe had his name changed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ...
Frequently, the nobiliary particle von (English 'of', or, more commonly, the French particule de noblesse 'de', meaning the same thing), was represented simply by the abbreviation v. to specify that it was being used to denote a member of the nobility, and not simply as the ordinary German-language preposition von.
The German republic, under Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution of 1919, legally transformed all hereditary noble titles into dependent parts of the legal surname. The former title thus became a part of the family name, and moved in front of the family name. Freiherr Hans von Schwarz, as a German citizen, therefore became Hans Freiherr von ...