Siegfried
A Germanic name meaning “victory + peace,” later used as a surname and familiar from the heroic dragon-slayer of legend.
The #8,878 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 83,716 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Siegfried is built from the old Germanic name elements sig- meaning “victory” and -frid/-fried meaning “peace.” The underlying sense is usually given as “victory-peace” or more loosely “peace gained by victory.” As a surname, it is taken from the inherited personal name rather than from an occupation or place.
History
The name was famous in medieval German heroic tradition through the figure of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied, which helped keep it recognizable across the German-speaking world. In later centuries it also spread as a hereditary surname, especially in German-speaking areas and in families descended from men named Siegfried. The same name appears in related spellings across other European languages, reflecting its long use as both a given name and a family name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The medieval hero Siegfried became so culturally prominent that 19th-century writers explicitly pointed to him as one of the old German names still living on in modern surnames.
From the historical record
“Personennamen, meist weit höher hinauf, bis in die Zeiten der Völker- wanderung — es braucht hier nur an die hervorragendsten Gestalten des Nibelungenliedes erinnert zu werden, an Siegfried, Hagen, Günther, Dietrich, Rüdiger, Namen, die wir sämtlich, wenn auch vielleicht ein wenig verändert, in der Gegenwart als…”
— Die deutschen Familiennamen