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The alter Surname

alter Name Meaning and History

  1. German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): distinguishing epithet for the older of two bearers of the same personal name.
  2. Jewish (Ashkenazic): from the Yiddish personal name Alter, an inflected form of alt ‘old’. This was in part an omen name, expressing the parents’ hope that the child would live a long life; in part an apotropaic name, given to a child born after the death of a sibling, but also said to have sometimes been assumed by someone who was seriously ill. The purpose is supposed to have been to confuse the Angel of Death into thinking that the person was old and so not worth claiming as a victim.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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The alter name in History

A unique volume of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary following the alter family name as far back in history as possible.

alter Family Facts

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Distribution of alter Families in the US in 1920
Number of alter families
 86-170
 29-85		 1-28
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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