Johan Jakob Hahn and the Origin of Hahn

As you may have noticed, I am a Haun. So I decided my very first mission on here would be to track my last name as far back as I could. Turns out that was a little harder than I expected. But with the help of both FamilySearch and Ancestry.com and a very helpful phone call to the genealogy center in Salt Lake City, I was able to go back a little further than I had on my own.

I wasn't able to get a whole lot of info but I did get some. The furthest validated record of our name of someone who was actually for sure related to us was with Johan Jakob Hahn in 1758 in Ropperhausen, Hessen-Nassau, Prussia. His name is listed in a microfilm registrar of German Births and Baptisms from 1558-1898. He is listed as having two children, George Hahn and Heinrich Hahn. I made a quick visual aid so you could see the "Line of Haun" all the way down to me with names and the years they were born.

Unfortunately that is pretty much the only source I was able to find on him. His spouse is even listed as unknown. But I didn't want to leave you hanging with a short post, so I decided this would be a great time to just research the origin of the name Hahn.

According to Ancestry.com Haun is: "German: from Middle High German hane ‘rooster’, hence a nickname for a conceited or sexually active man. In some instances it may have been a habitational name from a house bearing the sign of a rooster. One of the many Ashkenazic surnames based on vocabulary words denoting birds or animals."

Don't worry, I googled that crazy word. Turns out "Hahn" is very traditionally German Jewish. Ashkenazic Jewish to be precise. Which is a regional subgroup of Jews in the Germanic regions of Eastern Europe. Hahn is considered an animal Ashkenazic name. If you want an interesting read on Ashkenazic Names I suggest looking here.

The earliest instance of "Hahn" was clear back around 1230 with Eckhard Hahn or "Eggehardus Gallus" as his name was later made more Latin. The Hahns in that time were considered nobility! Eckhard was a councilor and knight to Duke Johann the 1st of Mecklenburg, and it seems as though his line continued to serve the "princes of Mecklenburg" for quite some time. Because he is basically the first Hahn, I hope to be able to establish a link between him and Johan, and take my line back further with more research! Hahn is documented in the "Deutsches Adels-Lexicon. im Vereine mit mehreren Historikern." which you can look at here. It roughly translates to "A Dictionary of German Nobility in Association with Several Historians." References to the Hahn family can be found starting on page 152 and then randomly throughout the rest of the book. You can learn more about Eckhard specifically by checking out here and here. I know they are Wikipedia articles, but they are well sourced. You also might need to translate them from German.

Around Eckhard's time is also when the "Hahn" Coat of Arms started showing up. There are, as with every coat of arms, several renditions. The most common one for the Hauns is the Red Rooster on a Silver Shield. That is the Coat of Arms that ties closest with my particular Haun Heritage. There is also a blue one that is essentially the same, but the shield is not tilted and it has more ties with English Hahns than our German ones.

The Coat has not changed much. It has the Rooster. Or "Shield of the Cock" as the history books like to call it. Two feathers on the rooster are supposed to be black but I couldn't find a picture I liked of those. But they represent the two values of the Hahn name: Vigilance and Militancy. Which I completely enjoyed learning as they are so spot on. The Hahn motto was added sometime later: Primus sum, qui Deum laudat. Which means "I am the first who praises God"

And that is pretty much what I found for the origin of the name. As I said, I hope to establish a direct link to Eckhard if I can with more research, for now I shall have to deal with the large blank space in between 1230 and 1758. I may not ever be exact, but Prussia and later Germany were some of the earliest censused areas so I am hopeful I will at least be able to establish more connections in the coming years.

Thanks for letting me prattle on!