How can i get a meaning of a last name without having to pay 300.00 for it. Are

Question:

How can i get a meaning of a last name without having to pay 300.00 for it. Are there any free sites?

We are trying to find out the meaning to our last name. It is German. Anyone that knows of a site that will not charge me $300.00 just to find out this one thing would be helpful. Thanks..

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I'll be honest, if your surname is out of the ordinary I don't trust any of the websites. They don't look at your particular family, they just post generalities that may or may not pertain to your family.

Example: The name "Tacey" is an adulteration of many different surnames. In the case of one family I've researched in Michigan the name comes from the very French-Canadian "Tessier". But you wouldn't know that if you hadn't done the research. The surname sites claim it's everything from Irish to Scottish to Welsh. One of the men for whom I did the research had a very aggressive man in Florida demand proof that it was French because he had done "years" of research on surnames and never heard of such a thing (he also wanted $250 for a falsified "family crest"). We not only had the records, we even had a copy of a family tree back to Urbain Tessier-Lavigne that was filed in a Quebec court back in the 1930s to prove the right of this family to join in a lawsuit against the Sulpician priests.

If your surname is German, then there are dozens of German linguists at colleges around the country who would be more than happy to help you find the etymology of your name. Ancestry.com has a section where they do a decent job of trying to translate names. They still get some wrong, but they're better than the surname sites trying to sell you name tzatchkes.