Lettau (surname)

The name Lettau, like its variants Lettow[1][2][3] and Lettou, derives from a medieval Saxon name for Lithuania. It appears in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, wherein it is said of the Knight, a veteran of the Baltic Crusades: "Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne / Aboven alle nacions in Pruce; / In Lettow hadde he reysed, and in Ruce, / No Cristen man so ofte of his degree."[4]

Lettau was the German name for the village of Litwa[5] near Włodowo (Waltersdorf) in the Masurian Lakeland, formerly part of the Oberland (highlands) of East Prussia. It was located beside Lettau See ("Lake Lithuania"), now called Jezioro Litewskie ("Lithuanian Lake"), which lies on the border between Olsztyn and Ostróda, counties of northeastern Poland's Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.

People with the surname include:

  • Georg Lettau (1878–1951), German lichenologist
  • Heinz Lettau (1909–2005), Professor of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin
  • Kevyn Lettau (born 1959), German-born jazz vocalist
  • Reinhard Lettau (1929–1996), German-American writer and professor
  • Andre Lettau, live midstakes poker player known as the winner of the 2014 EPT Barcelona

See also

References
  1. Johann Heinrich Zedlers Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, 1731-1754
  2. German -ow suffix
  3. Lettow-Vorbeck family (in German)
  4. Chaucer, Geoffrey (1881). The prologue to the Canterbury tales, with notes by E.F. Willoughby. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  5. pl:Litwa (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie) Litwa (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie)
  • Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, 2013
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