Names with a geographically defined origin - kind of a series.
When I was looking into the connection to Grace Kelly's ancestor Leonhard Treusch in the Odenwald, I was reminded of another case of a nameline leading back to the place after which the people are named to add to my occasional series, namely the Bitsch lineage hailing from Bitsch in Switzerland, in the German-speaking part of the Kanton Wallis / Vallais. (Not to be confused with Bitsch in Lorraine.)
The lineage can be traced back to Christian Bitsch, who was born around 1611 in Bitsch and died in Schiers (Kanton Graubünden/Grisons), which is also the place where his relevant son, also Christian, was born. We don't have documentation for the older Christian's birth in Bitsch, so my guess would be that when he settled in Schiers he became known as the guy from Bitsch, and the name stuck.
The younger Christian Bitsch was among the many Swiss immigrants who helped resettle southwestern Germany after the devastation of the Thirty-Years War. He went to the Odenwald area, married Katharina Zehfuss from Wernigerode (Harz) at Reichenbach in 1666, had at least 11 children (that's a lot of bitches!) and died at Raidelbach in 1708.
Her name, which literally translates to "toe-foot", sounds a bit strange, but her paternal grandfather was called Baltzer (Balthasar) Ziegenfuss, which means goat's foot, which makes more sense, especially as he died in Geisleden, a place that also has a goat in its name. Oh and the Swiss village of Bitsch has a goat in its coat of arms. Coincidence? There's definitely a goat theme emerging in this story.
Coat of arms of Bitsch, Switzerland.
The most recent Bitsch in my family tree, Barbara Bitsch, was born at Bonsweiher (now part of Mörlenbach) in 1704. So we have four generations of Bitsches.
Interestingly, the distribution of the name is still heavily focused on the Odenwald, with a secondary hotspot in Baden.
List of origin stories for name lines in my very irregular series:
- Zeutzheim from Horchheim (Koblenz), not far from the village of Zeuzheim.
- Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum);
- Kauer (linked to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074);
- Weyland is a name chosen by my Jewish ancestor upon his adult baptism - he was the reason I was travelling to Idstein;
- Obelode is a unique name linked to a farm at Steinhagen near Bielefeld
- From the same branch of the family tree and geographic area comes the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.
Ancestors' names matching place names that I should look into include: Trimbach, Wilsberg,
Update 25.1.2026: I created a new portal to navigate family history blog entries in the shape of a permanent Who Is Who page. This is because the old webpage at michaelgross.info will go offline on February 2nd.
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