Gordon, I don't know much about words of Germanic origin, but I do know that the final -s- also often indicates "descendant or son of..." in Welsh and other languages (i.e., Jones - "John's son"). In this case (MULLINS), in "A Dictionary of Surnames" by Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, is listed as definitely English and is one of several variations of the name MULLEN, meaning someone who lived by a mill, or an occupational name for a miller, originating from the Anglo-Norman French word "mo(u)lin, mulin" (mill). Barbara Gordon Barlow wrote: >> That final 's' almost certainly shows a germanic origin, where the >> >> >root > > >>of the word is not. >> >> > >I am a brand-new subscriber, and an amateur in the field of word-origins, >and if my question has been dealt with before on the List, I apologise. It >is this. What is it about a final 's' in a British surname that indicates a >Germanic origin? > >I suppose that a final 's' could be one of three things: a plural, a >possessive, and a dialectal "preference" such as one finds with other >suffixes such as -o and -y. I almost wrote "meaningless" dialectal >preference: I for one have never found any serious explanation of why some >past British dialects tended to have -o, some -y, some -s, and some -l. >Other European dialects too, presumably, with those and other "meaningless" >suffixes. > >I don't know much about Teutonic suffixes compared with say Irish suffixes >or Welsh suffixes or Slavic suffixes. Out of such ignorance comes my >question. > >Gordon Barlow > > >============================== >To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: >http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 > > > >