I have noticed that an enormous amount of villages and cities in the Eichsfeld and other Thuringia areas end in "rode." I know that means in English "clearing." And persons who came from those villages and were named after them had their names "eroded" to "rodt" and "rott" like mine, Vatterott. There is a Vatterode near the village where my ancestors emigrated from in the 1870's. Anyone study the reasons for so many towns with these letters, other than there was a lot of clearings of woods??

The ending "rode" usually means that a clearing had to be made in order to establish a settlement. For example, near where I grew up there is a village called Volkmarode (now part of Braunschweig). This probably means that a man called Volkmar made the clearing in the woods and established his settlement there. If you had a very wooded area of land, as Thuringia always was, you would expect a lot of names of towns ending in "rode", since a lot of clearing would have had to be done in order to establish settlements. I can't believe something I learned in Germany in third grade actually turned out to be useful this many years later! :-) Best regards, Thilo -- Thilo C. Agthe Brooklyn, NY tagthe@earthlink.net Frank wrote: > > I have noticed that an enormous amount of villages and cities in the Eichsfeld and other Thuringia areas end in "rode." I know that means in English "clearing." And persons who came from those villages and were named after them had their names "eroded" to "rodt" and "rott" like mine, Vatterott. There is a Vatterode near the village where my ancestors emigrated from in the 1870's. Anyone study the reasons for so many towns with these letters, other than there was a lot of clearings of woods?? > > ==== GERMAN-KINGDOMS Mailing List ==== > Subscribers: > Can you spare $10 dollars to support Rootsweb? > http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html