Nah. Not necessarily.
The -er CAN be that, but it can be many other things.
Hamburg is the city, Hamburger is someone from the city of Hamburg. Easy-peasy.
But it’s also used for other things. A Fischer is not someone coming from Fisch, but someone who’s profession (or hobby) is fishing. And that’s also a common last name. So -er is more like a suffix to transform some $WORD to mean ‘person, that has some kind of relation to $WORD’.
So it’s pretty common for last names to end that way, and it’s not always easily discernible what the relation to $WORD actually as, or sometimes not even known anymore what $WORD means. I wouldn’t have assigned any meaning to my own last name, for example, if I hadn’t researched it at some point (and it’s still unclear).
I’m not a language expert, just native speaker, so this is not an exhaustive explanation of the concept. I just wanted to point out, that it’s more complicated.
I deliberately chose that example for the shits and giggles.
But now that I think of it, I guess I should explain some more.
It doesn’t have to be a person to work that way.
Usually it works like this:
you have place names like:
Wien (Vienna)
Frankfurt
Nürnberg (Nuremberg)
Thüringen (Thuringia)
Krakau (Krakow)
by making them end in -er you can turn them into adjectives. (Keeping the capitalization, because they are names, although adjectives are usually lower-case):
Frankfurter Würstchen
Wiener Würstchen
Nürnberger Würstchen
Thüringer Würstchen
Krakauer Wurst
Those are all some kind of sausages (Wurst, pl. Würste, diminutive: Würstchen), by the way.
And because they are well recognized and when the context is clearly about food, you can drop the noun entirely and the former adjective turns into a Noun, which can stand on its own. (But mostly distinguished by their article/genus)
Frankfurter
Wiener
Nürnberger
Thüringer
Krakauer
Though for some reason, “Pariser” is a slang word for condoms.
I wouldn’t say I’m too fond of it. I don’t really write scripts much, but that way of calling a variable makes it easy to see, that it is a variable. So I thought it was fitting to abuse it here.
And a lot of Lemmy users seem to be somewhat familiar with Linux.
Wait, does it mean Himmler could mean something like ‘the one from heaven’?
Nah. Not necessarily. The -er CAN be that, but it can be many other things.
Hamburg is the city, Hamburger is someone from the city of Hamburg. Easy-peasy.
But it’s also used for other things. A Fischer is not someone coming from Fisch, but someone who’s profession (or hobby) is fishing. And that’s also a common last name. So -er is more like a suffix to transform some $WORD to mean ‘person, that has some kind of relation to $WORD’.
So it’s pretty common for last names to end that way, and it’s not always easily discernible what the relation to $WORD actually as, or sometimes not even known anymore what $WORD means. I wouldn’t have assigned any meaning to my own last name, for example, if I hadn’t researched it at some point (and it’s still unclear).
I’m not a language expert, just native speaker, so this is not an exhaustive explanation of the concept. I just wanted to point out, that it’s more complicated.
[ slowly puts half-eaten hamburger down in stunned horror ]
I deliberately chose that example for the shits and giggles.
But now that I think of it, I guess I should explain some more. It doesn’t have to be a person to work that way.
Usually it works like this: you have place names like: Wien (Vienna)
Frankfurt
Nürnberg (Nuremberg)
Thüringen (Thuringia)
Krakau (Krakow)
by making them end in -er you can turn them into adjectives. (Keeping the capitalization, because they are names, although adjectives are usually lower-case):
Frankfurter Würstchen
Wiener Würstchen
Nürnberger Würstchen
Thüringer Würstchen
Krakauer Wurst
Those are all some kind of sausages (Wurst, pl. Würste, diminutive: Würstchen), by the way. And because they are well recognized and when the context is clearly about food, you can drop the noun entirely and the former adjective turns into a Noun, which can stand on its own. (But mostly distinguished by their article/genus)
Frankfurter
Wiener
Nürnberger
Thüringer
Krakauer
Though for some reason, “Pariser” is a slang word for condoms.
I sense a tragic past with PHP. Or maybe Perl? Maybe even a little too fond of bash scripting?
It’s the bash-influence.
I wouldn’t say I’m too fond of it. I don’t really write scripts much, but that way of calling a variable makes it easy to see, that it is a variable. So I thought it was fitting to abuse it here.
And a lot of Lemmy users seem to be somewhat familiar with Linux.
Sort of yes, but the origins of old surnames are always uncertain