What ethnicity is the last name "Ernst"?

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sounds german to me

Dutch and German.

Sounds Deutch or English

Be careful about House of Names. They are a surname product peddler. There is no such thing as a family crest. A crest is part of a coat of arms. They DO NOT belong to surnames. Actually, there might have been, for instance, 15 different individuals named Ernst, not all necessarily related, each granted their own coat of arms, all completely different. Descendants of snake oil salesmen that sell them won't have all 15. They don't need to in order to sell to gullible people. Now if the name is in more than one national origin, they will have one of each, but that's all.

Anytime you see one of those dinky little walnut plaques on someone's den wall, be polite and don't laugh at them to their face, but what they have is something someone with their surname was granted and might not even be related. That is also true of people who have keychains and coffee mugs etc with coats of arms on them.

See the links below, one from the British College of Arms (they issue coats of arms) and the other from the most prestigious genealogical organization in the U.S., The National Genealogical Society.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.ht...

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp...

This is what www.ancestry.com has to say about the name,
Ernst Name Meaning and History
German and Dutch: from the personal name Ernst, which is most probably a byname from Middle High German and Middle Dutch ern(e)st ‘combat’, ‘serious business’. However, see Ernest.
Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname or ornamental from German ernst ‘earnest’, ‘serious’.
hope this helps.

The name originated in Germany. But it's so common and widespread from border to border, that there will be lots of families with that surname in many other countries since a long, long time. So we still don't know if a person with that name is of German heritage.

http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/en/D...