Why is the surname Hitler not found anywhere in society today?

Question:This was brought up during a discussion at work, and nobody could answer it. The more I thought about it, the more it bugged me. Was this surname wiped off the face of the earth? If so why? There are plenty of horrible mass murderers throughout history. If you try to answer this question, please provide some sort of proof on how the answer to the question was formed.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: This was brought up during a discussion at work, and nobody could answer it. The more I thought about it, the more it bugged me. Was this surname wiped off the face of the earth? If so why? There are plenty of horrible mass murderers throughout history. If you try to answer this question, please provide some sort of proof on how the answer to the question was formed.

Here are the actual facts. The surname Hitler is actually a name mangle. The actual surname in it's most common spelling is Hiedler. There was more than one occurrence of the name Hiedler being recorded (usually by some semi-literate clerk somewhere) as Hitler. Of course, the most famous goes without saying. However, even in this case, it wasn't Adolph whose name was mangled, it was his father, Alois Hitler. His father (illegitimate) ultimately took the name of his stepfather, Johann Hiedler but some clerk recorded it as Hitler (also found as Huetler and Huettler).

So the reason the name is rare is that it is actually a name mangle of Hiedler. But aside from the infamous Hitler, there have been a number of occurrences of this particular variant being used.

It also seems (I cannot remember WHERE I heard this so treat this information as suspect), that as a result of WWII and THE Hitler, many people who were carrying the surname spelled Hitler, reverted to the more common Hiedler to completely distance themselves from association with THE hitler. Again, I can't remember where I got that so I can't vouch for the veracity - but sounds good.

go to germany,dear, there are LOADS of Hitlers.

interesting...u made me think ore...people no more like to be recognized with controverisla thing..many might have changed the surname.

Our parish priest's surname is hitler

In case your not aware, the name Adolf Hitler is synonymous to genocide. The stark horrors of the holocaust back in World War II shown by the media in all its ghastliness shocked the world so much that Nazism, though effective politically, was relegated to nothing more than hooliganism and terror tactics.

The shock was almost total in that a lot of Germans then disavowed the name. Those born with the name immediately moved to other parts of their country and changed their names. Others of German descent in other countries immediately petitioned changes in their names and was granted such changes after an exhausting screening process.

A question arises here that there have been others more violent and have killed more than 3 or 4 holocausts put together such as the Khmer Rouge, Idi Amin, Josef Stalin, and Mao Ze Dong to name a few. It may be true for these later dictators, but the media were so suppressed that the truth never came out, hence, the world did not know. What the world doesn't know, the world doesnt care about.

It was always a rare surname. It hasn't disappeared entirely.

http://find.person.superpages.com/
has 12 people in the USA with that surname who have listed phone numbers. That proves it hasn't disappeared entirely.

In 1880, according to
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f...

there were just 108 people with it in the entire USA. That proves it was rare. It is a German or Austrian surname, but the USA has a fair sampling of many German, Swiss and Austrian surnames. (Plus I don't know if the the German census from that era is on-line.)

You could look for it in the German telephone book. I suspect many people in Germany who had it changed to "Schmidt".

Very good observation.