MY MIDDLE NAME One of our grand daughters - Katie McCaskey - who an active, oncoming artist and designer currently a Graduate Student at NYU, wrote to me asking about my rather unusual middle name.
It is written as “Loeffert” but said as “Leffert”. So Katie was correct in assuming that an umlout is properly used over the initial “o.” (That's two dots over certain letters in Teutonic writings. Those two dots tell the reader that the next upcoming vowel is to be pronounced with it as an “e” as in “eh”. I can remember being puzzled about all that as small child. It was “different”, so I insisted on using it when I wrote or printed my full name. I stopped using it when a smart aleck classmate started calling me “Umlout” out loud.
The exact date of the first arrival of this Loeffert group is not, as yet, known but we do have authentic birth certificate attesting to the arrival of John( Johann) George Loeffert at a house on Madison Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pa. He had brother named Henry and a sister, Emma Loeffert who married a Reise. John, my grandfather, - a musician at heart – a “bandsman” – accepted tradition and stayed with his father's trade as a carpenter.
John married my grandmother - Ida Armanda Lenz. A quick glance at eleven year old Henry Lentz and a younger boy thought to have been a brother, were on a small, wooden ship for ninety days in passage from Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany. He, like the Loeffert boys and others were escaping military drafts which demanded that all twelve year old males standing and breathing be in the army.
Thanks for writing, Katie. I think it is a good thing for us to look back now and then and try to understand some things about life in the olden days No, I don't know what the word “Loeffert” might have meant. I don't know enough German to delve into such inviting depths but I have always had a feeling it is occupational in nature, possibly stemming from old guild organizations of the 12th Century of so. It might stem from a woodcraft or forestry concern.
A.L.M. August 18, 2005 [c373wds]
