Coat of Arms & Family Crests Store
APPENZELLER Family Crest / APPENZELLER Coat of ArmsThe associated coat of arms for this name are recorded in J.B Rietstaps Armorial General. Illustrated by V & H.V Rolland's. This Monumental work took 23 years to complete and 85,000 coats of Arms are included in this work. This German and Ashkenazic Jewish surname of APPENZELLER was a topographic name for someone who lived by a shrine or at the site of a hermit's cell. The name was derived from the Old German word ZELLE, and rendered in medieval documents in the Latin form CELLA (small room). The name may also have been a habitation name from any of the various places named with this word, most notably the town of CELLE near Hanover. In some cases it may also have been an occupational name for someone who owned or was employed at a small workshop, and this is the likely source of the Jewish surname. Other spellings of the name include APPZELLER, ZELLER, ZELLE, ZELLMAN and ZELMAN. When traditional Jews were forced to take family names by the local bureaucracy, it was an obligation imposed from outside traditional society, and people often took the names playfully and let their imaginations run wild by choosing names which corresponded to nothing real in their world. No one alive today can remember the times when Jews took or were given family names (for most Ashkenazim this was the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th) although many remember names being changed after emigration to other countries, such as the United States and Israel in recent years. Circa 1881, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvannia, Ella Dodge, married Henry G. APPENZELER of the M.E.Church, who became a missionary in Corwa. Because of the close relationship between the English and German languages, some Germans are able to transform their names to the English form just by dropping a single letter. Many Germans have re-spelt their names in America. A great number of immigrants from Germany settled in Pennsylvania. After the start of the first World War, Germans in great numbers Anglicized their names in an effort to remove all doubt as to their patriotism. Afterwards some changed back, and then during World War II the problem became acute once more, and the changing started all over again, although not with as much intensity. |
