On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 12:48:34PM +0530, Venkat Mangudi wrote: > On Friday 20 January 2012 07:23 PM, John R. Sundman wrote: > > Eisenhower. > > > I am not sen, but I hover too... nice thread.
Probably originally Eisenhauer (iron-smasher), relating either to mining or smithing. Right: http://names.whitepages.com/last/eisenhauer German: occupational name for a worker in iron, from Middle High German īsen ‘iron’ (see Eisen) + houwære, a derivative of houwen ‘to cut, chop, or hew’. As a vocabulary word, this is found in west central (Palatine) Germany only; elsewhere the standard term is Schmidt. In the United States, the Eisenhauers (and bearers of the various Americanized forms of the name) are found mainly in PA.
