Resumen de A German Colony in Jutland: The Evidence of Christian Names
In 1760, invited by king Frederik V, immigrants came to Denmark from the southern parts of Germany. Uninhabited moorlands in Jutland needed to be cultivated and the German immigrants were offered a number of inducements to settle in Viborg County. Many of the German immigrants settled in a single parish, Frederik�s Parish. Here the German language was used for services in the parish church until 1856. Thereafter German and Danish services alternated, and from 1870 the church language was solely Danish. This investigation shows that in 1801, after about 40 years in Denmark, the immigrants� descendants still use Christian names that are different from the national Danish pattern. But in 1880 many of the descendants bear a particularly Danish development of a Nordic name, a name from the saints� calendar, or a name from the Bible. The increase in these names took place in the 1850s just after Denmark lost the war in 1848-50 against the German States, and Danish nationalism had arisen throughout the country. For this reason the descendants of the German immigrants had a need culturally or politically to show their Danish identity through the names about 20 years before the language of the church services became exclusively Danish in 1870.
