Last uptaded: Apr 17th, 2001
Thoroughly improved in Jan 2001

Preface: my Bartels ancestors came some 200 years ago to Southern Poland from somewhere in the West. The name was transformed to Bartelski soon thereafter to assimilate with local inhabitants ("-ski" is one of most popular Polish suffixes). However I'm still interested in all Bartels-related topics. These pages were designed to provide you with as much theoretical analysis as possible to give you wider background for your research. I would like to thank all the people who so often share their knowledge with me and provide me with various data of value taking a big part in the process of constant improvement of these pages.

Etymology: I have managed to find three German books describing the origin of this name. Two of them I got thanks to courtesy of Kai Krasnodembski from Germany who sent me the photo copies.

The first book by Max Gottschald "Deutsche Namenkunde" (issued Berlin 1936) says that the form Bartel (for our purpose should be treated equally with Bartels) comes usually from Bartholomäus. Another possible sources are the German word "bard" meaning "beard" and an old-fashioned "bercht"="shining, clear". The same affects Barteldes, Bartelt, Barthold (important in the lower part of the text). The name Bartholomaeus arose from the Greek "son of Tolmai" and one of its possible appearences is Bartels together with other forms as Berchthold, Barthol, Bartl and more.

Another book indicates that Bartels is subordinate to Bartel or Bartelt. Bartel (alternative spelling Barthel what does not affect the pronunciation since 'th' is read as 't' in German) may be mutation of Pertel or something. These names appeared in historical data as early as in the 14th and the 15th century. According to the rules of German grammar des Bartels is relevant to English "of Bartel" or "Bartel's". This means that Bartels may be patronymic (patronymic=coming from the name of sb's father) form to Bartel. On the other hand it may be well a derivative from Bartelt that comes from another name Berthold. Construction des Bartelts may be easily turned to Bartels. Finally, Berthold may come into Barteldes (Berthold -> Bertold -> des Bertoldes and a couple of simple vowel alternations) what may be shortened to Bartels.

The third book brings us the widest range of useful information. It says that the name was most popular at the Northern Sea coast ("Waterkant"). It is confirmed that the name is patronymic to Bartelt which is derived from Berthold. About the year 1300 "er" clusters started gradually alter to "ar". This phenomenon was most common in "Niederdeutsch" which is the dialect of German used in the North. Some lateral forms arose this way like Barthold, Barteldes or Bartholz. Barthold spelled in German "Bartolt" is already close to Bartelt what is supposed to be direct predecessor of Bartels, so does Bartholz where only vowel alternation o:e had to take place (Bartholz -> Bartelz with German "z" spelled like "ts" does not require any commentary). Barteldes was already discussed above. In addition we get a couple of examples of people from the past: Herman Berteldes from Kiel in 1455, Bartelt (please notify the form used as a first name) Sarow from Flensburg (small city near the border with Denmark) in 1597, Barthold Hinrik Brockes from Hamburg in 1680.

The origin of the name Bartels may be thus on of these:

• The Christian name Bartholomäus through Barthol to Bartel and Bartels.
• The word bart meaning in German "the beard". Adding popular "-el" suffix we get Bartel what may easily become Bartels.
• An old-fashioned bercht = "shining, clear". The already described process of er:ar conversion might have made it something like Barchtel or so, leading straight to Bartels.
• The most likely hypothesis assumes that the source is the name Berthold, what might have become Bartels most probably through Bartelt but also through Barteldes or Bartholz.

I may put safe statement that very few people manage to complete full historical date proving the real origin of their name and the rest (including myself) must be satisfied with the peace of information included above.

An important fact is that the hypotheses are mutually exclusive as they do not interfere. It is not possible that the two main lines (Bartholomäus and Berthold) arose from the same word (or whatever any pre-christian cluster of sounds may be called), because the name Berthold has got doubled consonants in the suffix part (l+t or l+d) what is not the case in the word Bartholomäus. There haven't ever been proved that any consonant duplication of that kind ever occured in German. The names sound pretty much like each other, but it's nothing more that the coincidence.

Of course we must be aware that all the analysed processes took place at the times when last names were not in common use. This particularly affects lower classes of the society among who the name (this used to look more like what we call today the "nickname") was usually closely related to the name of the father or any characteristic, like having an outstandingly big beard or being the most witty and brilliant ("shining, clear") intellect of the entire village... Due to lack of administrative procedures the last names at the stage of being formatted were very much prone to numerous phonetic and ortographic changes. This explains my statements like "may easily become", "leads straight to", "was changed to" and others.

Areas of dense appearance: the regions where the name is very popular are the lands of Northern Germany: mainly Schleswig-Holstein and so called "Waterkant" that means the coast of the Northern Sea but also Niedersachsen and Western Mecklenburg. There are enough proofs of its appearance in Ost Friesland as well. Apart from these, some Bartels' may be probably found in Southern Denmark and only 11 people named Bartels live in Poland. See the map to learn where are the regions mentioned above in case you didn't know (Bartelsdorfs are marked with red stars, other cities mentioned above with the yellow). There is The Great Geographical Encyclopaedia of the Kingdom of Poland issued in the 19th century (as much as 17 volumes were edited!) bringing thousands of names of people settling all around Poland. But the name Bartels appears there only twice. It says that Jan Bartels rented in 1662 the Cuiavian village named Malarki paying in advance 450 zlotys for 10 years, that is 45 zlotys per year. The deal was prolongated after 10 years, but the price rose to 800 zlotys for another decade. Jan Bartels died circa 1680, however. The second appearence of the name says, that Mr. Bartels from Rügen (the German island in Northern Mecklenburg) bought some properties near Zarnowiec village short before 1880, paying 110 000 tallars for all. There are complete data concerning the spread of Bartels (and Bartel) name in Poland. However there are too few Bartels' to consider the distribution to be anything more than the coincidencial chaos and on the contrary the name Bartel, fairly popular in Poland might (unlike Bartels! The -s suffix is not known in Polish language) have arisen in a purely Polish, completely different way than the names analysed here, like from an old-fashioned Polish word bart, meaning "the axe". So please be careful and don't draw rush conclusions from these data too fast. They might be misleading.
For those of you who don't know European geography well or all those who just want to take a wide look at the areas where the name was and perhaps still is most popular see the map of Europe. The smaller area in the East was called Ostpreussen (in 1945 split between USSR and Poland) and was a teritory where a lot of imigrants from Northern Germany actually settled. The green arrow shows the direction of the migrations.
The density of the appearence of the name reflexes deeply in the toponomy of the specified regions as well (see the next paragraph for more information on that topic).

The toponymic analysis: The toponomy is a branch of science that goes about studying the historical background of the geographical names. There are numerous places bearing the names strongly connected with Bartels.

• GERMANY. There are two small villages named Bartelsdorf in Northern Germany. Bartelsdorf means literally "The village of Bartel(s)". The first Bartelsdorf is in the middle of the road between Hamburg and Bremen (Niedersachsen; see the map) and the second Bartelsdorf is very close to the former border between Western and Eastern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein; see the map).
  
• CZECH REPUBLIC. There are three villages that used to be named Bartelsdorf in the past. The official Czech names of these places are now: Drinov (the green star at the map), Bartultovice (the yellow star at the border with Poland) and Bartovice (the red star in the East). Bartultovice and Bartovice are most probably purely Czech names with an independent historical background and the German name Bartelsdorf was assigned to them just because it looked similiar. But Drinov may be a separate case. It is placed at the foot of the Sudety Mountains, the land that used to be German for ages and was inhabited by huge German minority. As the Czech today's name sounds completely different from the original it is very likely that the city name has something to do with Bartels (in other words: a Bartels family must have been one of the founders of the city) and the Czech authorities wanted to sweep out any remains of the Germans at these terrains and removed the old name.
  
• POLAND. There are many toponymic remains at the teritory of today's Poland, but please note that most of these terrains were anected no earlier than in 1918 or 1945, so this area used to belong to Germany throughout centuries. I have completed the full list of Polish villages which names may be interesting for us. See the map of all these villages and click on every village name to see the original photo copy of the text from the book to learn what exactly was written about the place (in Polish).
  
  • Barciszewo - a small village near Olsztyn in NE Poland. Names foun in the old documents: 1342 Bertoldisdorf, 1378 Bertoldsdorf, 1570 Bartelsdorff, 1796 Bartelsdorf, and Bartelsdorf was an official name until 1945 when Polish authorities (this village was German all the time before) imposed today's name. A very interesting commentary was put in the text below: "the old German name Bartelsdorf is a derivative of the name Bartel which comes from Bartold that is associated at the German soil with Bartholomäus." (sic!) Although I have proved earlier on this page that these names are a separate thing and they cannot be associated in any way they write something completely different!
  • Bartel Maly - a settlement next to Bartel Wielki in the Cuiavia region. An old name of this village was Bartlewko (1880). A simple translation of German Klein Bartel.
  • Bartel Wielki (here is another text) - the first trace of the name in the history was Bartlewo in 1682. The German name was Groß Bartel. No interesing variations were found for this name. A second text points out that the origin of the name is the word Bartold.
  • Bartla - a lost village near Opole, SW Poland. I couldn't find it anywhere on the map. I don't know anythig about the origin of this name as well.
  • Bartlewo - a very old village near Torun. Marked in the documents as early as in 1311 as Bartoldi. 1400 Barthelsdorf, 1667 Batlewo, 1921 Bartlewo (German spelling: Battlewo). A name was written both with a "B" and a "W" at the front (alternative forms: Watlewo, Watliewo, Watlaw). Another interesting commentary: "the name is a derivative from Bartel, what is a derivative of Bartold or Bartholomäus." And this is still the same book! But this time it is consistent with my earlier conclusions. So how it is that professional historians put contradictory opinions in one book? Or maybe they didn't pay too much attention to it; they have thousands of names to work up after all. Be distrustful, you can never know if what you read is true.
  • Bartoldy - a village in the Przasnysz region (about 60 miles in the North of Warsaw). 1456 Bartholthowo, 1476 Bartholdi, 1827 Bartolty. A derivative from Bartold (German spelling: Barthold).
  • Bartolty - 1379 Bartoldsdorf, 1615 Bartelsdorf, split into Groß- and KleinBartelsrof in the 18th cenruty. Polish equivalent was Bartolty Duze and Bartolty Male, respectively. A derivative from Bartel, and this time the commentary says once again that it comes either from Bartold either Bartholomäus.
• REST OF THE WORLD. I recieve lots of reports on the Bartels settlers from all over the world including Australia, US, South Africa (Afrikaneers: Dutch colonists who came to Africa in 19th century). Some of the villages were named then after their founders. This is why there are lots of places called Bartelsdorf, Bartelshof (dorf=village, hof=farm) on almost every continent of the Earth: Europe, North America, Africa, Oceania. Only Asia and South America are still missing, but I still expect some news from these regions so it is still possible that the Bartels' left their traces there as well.

Famous Bartels' around the world: the most famous Bartels was probably Michael Bartels, former Formula 1 driver, Steffi Graf's ex-fiancé. There was a prominent scientist, geophysicist Julius Bartels (1899-1964) as well. One of Polish well-known satirists was named Arthur Bartels (1818-1885) but this was not his real name. One of the major streets of Adelaide, Southern Australia is named after Adolph Bartels, who was one of the first Lord Majors of the City in the 19th century.

Links to other sites concerning the name: the Bartels info at the Web is yet not very well developed. There are several servers carrying Bartels-related information.

• Jewish ShtetlSeeker - at this page you will learn the location of every village in Central&Eastern Europe including the Bartelsdorfs.
• BARTELS at RootsWeb - hosted by RootsWeb.com. This page brings you wide possibilites to search different web engines for your Bartels ancestors and relatives. There is also a mailing list there, dedicated entirely to the discussion and sharing information regarding the Bartels surname. I strongly recommend you to join the list. To subscribe send a message at BARTELS-L-request@rootsweb.com and put the word 'subscribe' in the first line of the body of the message.
• Bartels Family Genealogy Forum - the Usenet-like organised forum where you may post every information or query related to the name. Apart from my page the only place at the Web dedicated entirely to the name.
• Family Trees - some Family Trees including people named Bartels.
• Bartold - an excellent page by Thomas Bartold concerning everything what might be interesting about Bartold name. As we've already learned this name has strong connections with Bartels.
• Bartlett - dedicated to Bartlett and its mutations. May also be interesting due to similarity to Bartelt/Barthold.
• Bartels Lutheran Church from Iowa - a protestant church. Their mission is to provide Christian care to enhance the quality of life for aging adults.
• The Bartels Company - a huge financial enterprise, but the only connection to the subject of this page is the name of their boss.
• To be improved

Bibliography:

1. B.Chlebowski, F.Sulimierski, Wl.Wlodarski "Slownik geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego", vol. I-XIV, Warszawa 1880 (in Polish)
2. H.Gornowicz "Toponimia powiatu starogardzkiego", Wroclaw 1985 (in Polish)
3. M.Gottschald, "Deutsche Namenkunde", Berlin 1936 (in German)
4. K.Rymut "Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych", Krakow 1992 (in Polish)
5. K.Rymut and others "Nazwy miejscowe Polski" , Krakow 1996 (in Polish)

Prepared and maintained by Wojtek Bartelski.

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