A hopeful meaning of “Auster”

A reader wrote from the Netherlands:

Mr. Auster (by the way: I presume that’s a—funny—nom de plume?) …

My reply:

No, it’s my real name. Why do you assume it’s a nom de plume, and why would it be funny? I know that Auster in German means oyster, which is an unlikely explanation since my Jewish ancestors in Poland, then part of the Austrian empire, would not have named themselves after non-kosher sea food. Auster in Latin means south or south wind. (In my edition of Ovid the poet speaks of Auster as the south wind or the god of the south wind.) Perhaps the origin is from the German word for Austria, Österreich, eastern realm, with ost meaning east, and ost (this is pure speculation) related to “aust,” since I’ve also seen Austria spelled in German as Austerreich. Another candidate is the ancient kingdom of Austrasia, the eastern kingdom of the Franks, so maybe—again I’m just guessing—“aust” does mean east. (In which case my name would mean south in one language and east in another.)

The reader replied:

Oh, I thought it was a word play on “to oust,” as in remove….nomen est omen, Mr. Auster! [Nomen est omen: the name is an omen.]

My reply:

Oh, how about that, yet another possible etymological root for “Auster,” as in the German aus, which means “out” or “oust” as in “get the Muslims out of the West.” I agree, that is funny.

Then in an unrelated e-mail exchange with another correspondent, I said:

By the way, regarding my tendency to exclude certain people/ideas, someone just pointed out to me that “aus” is the German for “out,” also related to “oust” and “remove,” and he asked me if Auster is a nom de plume, since the name seems to convey what I believe in, as in, “Remove the Muslims.”

Ironically, while I’ve thought about the several possible linguistic origins of “Auster,” the obvious connection to the German aus had never occurred to me.

But it gets more interesting when we look at both of my names. When I was a kid I looked up my first name and found out that it means “victory,” derived from the laurel wreath that was placed on the head of a victorious athlete or general. So my name means … Victorious Remover! Maybe this is why I remain hopeful for the West, despite the terrible (and, many people think, inescapable) cultural and demographic cul-de-sac we’re in.

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Dmitri writes:

I am from Russia, and I knew several Jewish people with the name Austreich. It seems to be a common name, and it is possible that your name is from the same origin. Possible also, though I can only guess, that your ancestors when they came to America shortened their name in such a way that it sound more “British”—I know that this practice is quite widespread among Jewish immigrants.

My reply:

Auster was the name of a large extended family in Eastern Poland around the city of Stanislav. It was not changed when they came to America.

However, by coincidence, there is a connection to Britain, since William Bradford, the leader of the Pilgrims, came from a village named Austerfield in Yorkshire, England, which still exists today. I had thought that Austerfield meant south field, but according to Wikipedia, it comes from the Germanic Ouestraefeld meaning eastern field. So once again, Auster means both south and east.

I never heard of the name Austreich, but Austreich sounds, once again, like a variant on the name for Austria, Östereich, which in turn comes from the ancient Frankish name Austrasia, the eastern kingdom of the Franks, which was combined with the Western kingdom, Neustria, to form Charlemagne’s empire. Later the two split up again, and the western part became the core of France, and the eastern part became part of Germany.

Here is more on this from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

AUSTRASIA. The word AUSTRIA signifies the realm of the east (Ger. Ost Reich). In Gregory of Tours this word is still used vaguely but the sense of it is gradually defined, and finally the name of Austria or Austrasia was given to the eastern-most part of the Frankish kingdom. It usually had Metz for its capital, and the inhabitants of the kingdom were known as the Austrasii.

Also, here is an article on Austerfield going back to its history in Anglo-Saxon times, when the Synod of Austerfield was held in 702. The author thinks that the name of the village comes from its farming background, since, he says, “an ‘auster’ [is] a sheep pen on the open common land.” Yet another meaning of Auster. Going further back in time, there was a first century Roman Governor of Britain, Publius Ostorius Scapula, who defeated a British tribe in the area, and a 17th century writer suggested that the village name came from the “field of Ostorius” battle.

I should have clarified that while the name Austria (for the Frankish Austrasia and modern Austria) is the same, it refers to two historically and geographically different lands. Howard Sutherland writes:

As for Austria, I believe Österreich is not related to Austrasia, which lay well to the west of what became Austria. At the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the Carolingian empire was divided into Francia, Germania and Austrasia, with the last lying between the other two. The old County of Lorraine, the mediaeval Burgundian duchy, the Franche-Comté, Savoy and Provence were all in the old Austrasia. It is confusing, but I think the name Austrasia faded from use as the Austrasian kingdom was breaking up at about the same time that Austria was coming into use for the lands down the Danube east of Bavaria. Austrasia was the eastern side of the Frankish lands, but not the eastern edge of Charlemagne’s empire, which included Germany west of the Elbe. Österreich was the Eastern Realm of the later German Empire (the HRE). Under the Ottonians and even before, Germans had been moving east down the Danube, and Austria developed as the Eastern March (Ostmark) of Bavaria. Under the Babenbergs, and later the Habsburgs, Austria was the HRE’s southeastern bulwark against the Slavs and Magyars; the southeasternmost German lands. (It still contains the latter.)

Just to add to the confusion, as Germany grew east of the Elbe, there was another Ostmark north of Bohemia, between the Elbe and the Oder. There Germans were running into Poles, rather than the Magyars the Germans of Austria had to contend with. That Ostmark was later part of Saxony, and ultimately Brandenburg-Prussia.

Thanks to Mr. Sutherland for the explanation. Now I just need someone to explain Burgundy to me, and I’ll be cooking with gas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 05, 2006 02:10 AM | Send