Niemann
A German surname usually understood as meaning “new man” or “newcomer.”
The #7,908 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 73,792 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Niemann is generally taken as a German surname built from words meaning “new” plus “man,” essentially the same idea as English Newman. In older scholarship, especially for northern German and Low German areas, it was often explained as a name for a newcomer, stranger, or recent arrival. Some 19th-century writers also connected it with broader Germanic forms based on new/young, but the “new man” sense is the standard explanation.
History
The name is especially associated with northern Germany and appears in older German surname lists alongside other German family names formed from common descriptive words. It also turns up in related forms across German-speaking areas, reflecting the spread of surnames based on everyday nicknames and status terms. In English-language reference works of the 19th century it was compared directly with Newman, showing that the same surname type existed in several European languages.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
19th-century surname scholars explicitly grouped Niemann with Newman as a near-equivalent meaning “new man.”
From the historical record
“Nimmo. Dch. Nimmo, Niemer, Nieman ; G. Niemann ; p.n. Nince. G. Nintz ; a p.n. Nipper. Fl. Nepper ; a p.n. Nisbet. A loc. n., Berwick, Had- dingtonsh., Roxburgh”
— British Family Names: their origin and meaning (1st ed.)