Anyone out there with the following last names that can tell me the nationality

Question:

Anyone out there with the following last names that can tell me the nationality of that name?

Payne - I think it's German.
Nye - Dutch?
Alexander - ??

Everything I found on the net kept sending me to someplace to do a family tree for a couple hundred bucks. I don't want that. I just want to know the nationalities.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Payne
English: variant spelling of Paine. This is also a well-established surname in Ireland.

Nye
English (southeastern): topographic name arising from a misdivision of Middle English atten (e)ye which means either ‘at the river’ or ‘at the island’, from Old English ea ‘river’ and eg ‘island’ respectively. Both these words were feminine in Old English, and so should have been preceded only by Middle English atter (see Rye), but distinctions of gender ceased to be carefully maintained in the Middle English period.

Alexander
Scottish, English, German, Dutch; also found in many other cultures: from the personal name Alexander, classical Greek Alexandros, which probably originally meant ‘repulser of men (i.e. of the enemy)’, from alexein ‘to repel’ + andros, genitive of aner ‘man’. Its popularity in the Middle Ages was due mainly to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great (356–323 bc)—or rather to the hero of the mythical versions of his exploits that gained currency in the so-called Alexander Romances. The name was also borne by various early Christian saints, including a patriarch of Alexandria (adc.250–326), whose main achievement was condemning the Arian heresy. The Gaelic form of the personal name is Alasdair, which has given rise to a number of Scottish and Irish patronymic surnames, for example McAllister. Alexander is a common forename in Scotland, often representing an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name. In North America the form Alexander has absorbed many cases of cognate names from other languages, for example Spanish Alejandro, Italian Alessandro, Greek Alexandropoulos, Russian Aleksandr, etc. (For forms, see Hanks and Hodges 1988.) It has also been adopted as a Jewish name.

Hope this helps. Source(s):
www.ancestry.com Alexander I /believe/ is either Roman or Greek. http://www.last-names.net/ Payne: http://www.joepayne.org/payne.htm...

Nye: http://www.babynames.com/name/nye...

Alexander as a first name: http://www.babynames.com/name/alexander...

Alexander as a last name: http://genealogy.about.com/library/surna... I don't have any of your last names, but I have a good link for you.

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...
is free, but as soon as you click on "Learn more" you'll get an offer to spend money, so don't click on it.

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Every time I answer a "Surname Origin?" question, I think of the joke:

Man sees a sign, "Olaf Olafson, Chinese Restaurant". He goes in, orders a plate of chow mein, asks the Chinese gentleman behind the counter who is Olaf. Chinese gentleman says, "Me! There I was at Ellis Island. The man in front of me was a Swede, six foot four, broad shoulders, red beard. They ask him 'Name?' he says 'Olaf Olafson', in a voice that makes the pens rattle in their holders. Off he goes to seek his fortune. They ask me 'Name?', I say 'Sam Ting', and here I am."

Seriously, you should have 16 surnames among your great great grandparents, unless you double up on Smith, Johnson, Miller or Jones or someone married a cousin.

If you are in the USA and trace your family tree, you might find a downtrodden immigrant who came through Ellis Island yearning to be free, a bootlegger, a flapper, a great uncle who died in the muddy trenches of France in 1917. You may find someone who marched off to fight in the Civil War (Maybe two, one wearing blue, one wearing grey). You may find a German who became Pennsylvania "Dutch", a Huguenot, an Irish Potato Famine immigrant. You might find someone who married at 18 and supported his family with musket, plow and axe in the howling wilderness we now call Ohio.

In the UK your chances of finding a homesteader are less, but your chances of finding that great uncle who served in WWI are better.

In Australia you may find someone who got a free ride to a new home, courtesy of the benevolent Government and HM Prison ship "Hope".

Your grandfather with that surname may have married a Scot, a Sioux, a Swede. HIS father, a stolid, dull protestant, may have married an Italian with flashing dark eyes, the first woman on the block to serve red wine in jelly glasses and use garlic in her stew. You'll never know if this is the only question you ask. "The Origins of our Surnames"
"Alexander from Greek, meaning a 'defender of men'. How it came to be a surname is uncertain, but it was probably a patronymic. A diminutive form is Sanders, and is also found in Mac Allister (son of Alexander) in Scotland"
"Nye, from Old English, meaning a 'dweller by a stream'"
"Payne, Pain, Paine, Paines, Pane, Paynes - from Latin meaning 'someone who lived in the countryside/a resident in a country village/a rustic" Payne could be German or English.
Nye is probably Dutch or German.
Alexander is probably English. The same name can come from more than one nationality. Not everyone with the same surname is related or share ancestors.

The only way to know your ancestry is to trace your family tree. Anytime you wish to do this, there are lots of good people on this board that can give you some great help. just ask.

Family trees on websites must always be verified before you take the information as fact. They are submitted by folks like you and me and most is not documented.