Perhaps the biggest problem with names is that when people came through immigrations, their names were Anglicized, but they probably were not translated. Transcribers frequently wrote what they heard, and English spelling was not standardized in the United States for many years. My Yuergins or Yuergens ancestors became Jergins while others became Yergins, Jergens, Jergin or Jergin and many other variants. If I knew what Yuergins means in German, I suppose that I could come up with an English word that means the same thing or something close to it. Turning Yuergins in Jergins is not a translation. The dictionary calls it transliteration: To represent (letters or words) in the corresponding characters of another alphabet. My guess is that translation was rarely done, if ever, and that the English name can rarely be considered a translation. Cathey