Places of Origin & Distribution of Lohmeyer Families

(Auf Deutsch )

In Germany, the surname Lohmeyer exists today in a wide variety of spellings, the most common being LOHMEYER and LOHMEIER.  There are eight other variant spellings: LOHNSMEIER, LOHMAIER, LOHMAYER, LOHMAIR, LOHMEIR, LOHMAYR, LOHMEYR and LOMEIER. A few of the LOHMAR and LOHMER families may also be variants of Lohmeyer.

LOHMEIER (707)LOHMEYER (584)Interestingly, some of these surnames are found in very different parts of Germany. The most common names: LOHMEIER and LOHMEYER are found predominantly in the North-Western part of Germany with both surnames highly localised to the Minden-Lübbecke district in Westphalia.

Even today, almost 32% of all LOHMEIER and LOHMEYER families in Germany live in East-Westphalia (Ostwest-falen) and adjoining districts in Lower Saxony (Nieder-sachsen).  There is also a pocket of LOHMEYER families in East-Frisia (Ostfriesland) around Leer, Aurich and Ammerland. Surprisingly, even population centres like Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and Cologne barely register in terms of absolute numbers of Lohmeyer families (see maps above). The most rare derivative of the Lohmeyer surname is LOHNSMEIER. There are only four LOHNSMEIER entries, all of which are found in Minden and the adjoining district of Schaumburg.

VARIOUS (218)In contrast, the LOMEIER, LOHMAIER, LOHMAYER, LOHMAIR, LOHMEIR, LOHMAYR and LOHMEYR families are found almost exclusively in Bavaria, with a few outliers in major population centres like Berlin, Hannover and Cologne (see map on the right). It is therefore likely that these surnames are of Bavarian origin or perhaps go back to a few Lohmeier/Lohmeyer individuals who emigrated to Bavaria in the 1600's or early 1700's.

LOHMER / LOHMAR (576)The surnames LOHMAR and LOHMER are also considered by some to be variants of LOHMEYER. However, their distribution suggests a different origin. These families are concentrated in the Bonn-Siegburg area of South Westphalia and not around Minden. Many of these families probably derive their surname from the village of Lohmar near Siegburg. Taken together, there are roughly as many LOHMAR and LOHMER families as there are LOHMEYER (see maps above).

Speculation & Explanation

There has been much speculation about the reason why the surname Lohmeyer should be so highly localised to the area around Minden-Lübbecke in Westphalia, given that forests (loh-)* and farmers (-meyer)* were common right across Germany (*for more detail, see 'The Lohmeyer Surname: Derivation & Meaning').

The prolific 19th century genealogist Carl Theodor Lohmeyer attributed the origin of the surname to the presumed Lower-Saxon origin of the word 'loh' (you can find his 1905 paper on the different Lohmeyer families in Germany in my Attic Treasures). However, this theory is not supported by the fact that towns and villages called Loh, Lohe, or beginning with Loh- or ending in -loh are found right across Western Germany (see map to the right). Interestingly however, the distribution of surnames beginning with the prefix LOH- is much less uniform (see below left). Even more demarkated is the distribution of surnames ending in -MEIER or -MEYER (below right). Whilst the surnames LOHMEYER and LOHMEIER clearly originated independently in a number of different places, it is nevertheless striking that the combination of LOH- and -MEYER only seems to have occured in a very limited region of East-Westphalia and perhaps in Bavaria.

LOH-_____ (27264)___-MEIER & ___-MEYER (166621)Of course, Germany is not the only country in which Lohmeyer families can be found today.  Many emigrated to the Americas, Africa and as far as Australia. I have also collected data on some of these overseas branches of the family.

The graphics on this page were produced using the GeoGen online surname mapping tool developed by Christoph Stöpel and I am particularly indebted to him for the analysis of the prefix and suffix data. GeoGen maps the the number and frequency of surnames based on the German whitepages telephone book of 2002. All of the images on this page are made available here under the Creative Commons Licence from C.Stöpel and may be freely copied and derivatised, providing that their origin is appropriately credited. The text on this page remains the exclusive copyright of Matt. Lohmeyer.