About the “Genanntname”:

A „Genanntname”, also „Vulgoname”, is a name where the house name overlapped or was added to a person’s real name because of its attachment to a farm or, more rarely, a house. Some of the “Genannt-Namen” date from the time when family names were introduced (late Middle Ages). In later name formations of this kind, the “named-part” often referred to the property, or the names arose as a result of adoption, with the “named-part” referring to the name of the adoptive father or, if applicable, the adoptive mother. Originally they applied to an individual, later to the whole family.

Named part becomes new family name

Often the part of the name became the new, sole family name, for example Johannes Welcker (1430-1513), Magister artium and book printer in Basel, was given the name “Amerbach” after his birthplace Amorbach. The son of Johannes Welcker gen. Amerbach was the humanist Bonifacius Amerbach (1495-1562), whose son in turn was the jurist and art collector Basilius Amerbach.

The Westphalian ministerial dynasty named in the 13th century after its ancestral seat as de Vitighoven (later von Vietinghoff or Vittinghoff) received the epithet genannt Schell (or Scheel) in the 15th century at the latest, although most lines of the widely branched family usually use the name of origin, but one still calls itself von Schell today.

In the case of the noble Kn(a)ut(h) family, which did not use a noble predicate, the name suffix dictus, dicti, vero, qui et was used before Knut/Knaut as a gender name and not as a name of origin, for example Timone dictis Knut in 1255. The spelling for a place was written Heynricus Knut dictus de zchidingen.