I.3 Hutstein, Huthsteiner, Huetstainer…

I.3 Hutstein, Huthsteiner, Huetstainer…

It is interesting to see, that within the hessian and Saxonian families the name Hutstein resp. Hutsteiner was obviously used without taking to much care of the ending -er (or any -h- in between). For the same person mentioned in the records it is possible to find all different spellings used in parallel, sometimes written down by the same author.

I recognized in the records that in Bavaria and Austria the name is usually not used with an -h- and around the year 1800 one family lost the ending -er. Therefore, all ‘Hutstein’ family members of the austro-bavarian family lines have a single ancestor – Johann Hutstein – born in 1800 in Künzing.

During certain time in history this -er was left out on purpose to hide a possible peasant origin, but likely not in this case.

One special thing to say about Huetsteiner: this -ue- is due to Bavarian pronunciation of ‘Hut’, i.e. ‘Huet-‘ is equivalent to ‘Hut’.

In very old church records it is often seen, that Hutsteiner is written as ‘Hutstainer’. In German language -ei- is equivalent to -ai-, pronounced in English as ‘i’.

During my research in Hessen and Westphalia I recognized that for the catholic family mainly the name ‚Huthstein‘ without an ending -er was recorded, while the lutheran ones most of the time were known as ‚Huthsteiner‘.

In Saxony I found occurrence of ‘Huttsteiner’ with double ‘t’ in records before 1750 as well as ‘Huttenstainer’ before 1650.

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