Allaman - Derivation of the Place Name

This essay interprets the place name Allaman. Allaman is a village with a castle in Switzerland. Former derivations are ad Lemanum “on Lake Geneva,” though the place is not on the lake; and Allmende “common land,” which makes little sense.

I start out from the fact that on the northeast of Allaman there are many village names ending in –ens. (Zinsli, Paul: Ortsnamen. Frauenfeld, 1975. Taf.III u. Anm. 46.). This –ens ending is commonly viewed as the Romanized (French) form of the German ending –ingen. (The English counterpart would be -ings as in Hastings). These -ingen names appertain to the oldest stratum of name-creations that the Alamans bestowed on their homesteads.

On Zinsli’s map there is a rather concentrated swarm of 99 –ens names. They are contained in a well-defined territory, shown yellow on this map. That means that the Alamans once advanced to the shores of Lake Geneva. They were not only settlers but fierce warriors, fighting almost continually with the Franks. In the year 746 the Frankish ruler Karlmann quashed the last insurrection of the Alamans. It was the final collapse of the duchy (Herzogtum) of Alamannia. Alamannic speech was unable to hold its own in the space between the modern linguistic boundary and Lake Geneva. It gave way to French. Were it not for this residue of Alamannic place names, we would be ignorant of the outline of this part of the early medieval duchy of Alamannia.

My argument is that since Allaman is precisely on the frontier of Alamannia, it was given this name because it was the gate to Alamannia. Traveling on the highway from Burgundy one entered the southern tip of Alamannia at Allaman. One may imagine a custom station or an armed fort rather than a mere homestead. It would be the forerunner of the present castle. Burgundy stood at that time under Frankish hegemony.

It might seem peculiar that a frontier station should be named after the country that one enters there. But a contemporary parallel confirms that this was indeed the style of the time: A hundred miles to the northeast lies the Aargovian village Turgi on the Reuss. Its name reflects the Swiss-German pronunciation of Thurgau. Thurgau is now a medium-size canton, but in the early Middle Ages it was a huge Alamannic county (Grafschaft), stretching from Lake Constance to the Reuss. In the eighth century there was a ferry at Turgi, linking Frankish Burgundy with Alamannic Thurgau. It was on the same boundary as Allaman.

If Allaman got its name in the manner sketched here, the naming must have taken place before 746, because afterwards the concept of Alamannia as a state was severely impaired.

The family name Allaman, with its various spellings, likely derives in a more direct line from the people of the Allamans: Immigrants everywhere were often named after the region from which they had emigrated. Allaman, therefore, means “person from Alamannia.” Alamannia, in turn, is thought to derive from Alle Mannen, “all men.” What exactly is meant by this appellation is uncertain. Other examples of surnames indicating former residence are Bayer, Schweizer, Schwabe, Hess, Sachs, and Franke.

george@georgebertschinger.com