LL-L "Name" 2007.03.22 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 22 March 2007 - Volume 02

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From: Felix Hülsey <felix.huelsey at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L Names

Hallo Lowlanders,

today our local (NRW) radio station WDR 5 had a "Namenstag" where people
could call in to ask about their family names. Predictably I couldn't
get through, so I got the idea of asking you all, as my name is probably
from the lowlands.

My family name is Hülsey.

Searching on the internet resulted in nothing much; I found a few sites
about names but none of them included mine. But I came across the
Wikipedia article about the European Holly (Stechpalme, Ilex aquifolium)
which is called hulst in Dutch and seems to be called Hülse in certain
(not specified) German regions.

On this great site
http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/v3/
which shows the distribution of family names on maps of Germany and
Austria I found out what I already knew, namely that most Hülseys live
either in the Gütersloh region (where my father is from) or around
Steinfurt, both Low Saxon speaking areas in the Westphalian half of
Northrhine-Westphalia.

What do you think about this, could my name be related to the name of
this plant? And if so, what might the -ey part be? It reminds me of the
Scandinavian ending which means island, but that is probably not true,
is it?

Thanks in advance!

Best wishes from Cologne
Felix Hülsey
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