Kieffer and Kiefer: the pine tree or the cooper?

In German, die Kiefer is the pine tree. Look the word up in a dictionary and the tree comes first, so it is easy to conclude that the first Kiefer, or Kieffer, was named after a pine. The specialists say otherwise: the German surname dictionary explains both names as the cooper’s name.

One spelling, three words

Standard German has two everyday words spelled Kiefer, and they are not related:

• die Kiefer, the pine. The name of the tree is recorded from the early fifteenth century. The etymological dictionary of German explains it as a worn-down compound of Kien, resinous pinewood, and Föhre, another word for pine. Regional forms such as East Franconian Kinfir and Bohemian Kinfer still show both parts.
• der Kiefer, the jaw. It goes back to Middle High German kiver and kivel, an old Germanic word for the jaw.

The third word is not standard German at all. In the dialects of southern and central Germany, the rounded vowel ü is pronounced i, so Küfer, the cooper, is spoken Kiefer. The article on the origin of the name explains this sound change, called unrounding.

A surname written Kiefer can therefore look like the pine and sound like the cooper.

What the German surname dictionary says

The Digitales Familiennamenwörterbuch Deutschlands (DFD) is a long-term project of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, begun with the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Mainz. It is working through the surnames found in Germany today, most common first. Its entries for Kiefer and Kieffer, written by Rita Heuser, say this:

• Main meaning: the cooper. Kiefer is named after the trade. It is Küfer with the ü unrounded to i.
• In individual cases: a scold. Some Kiefers may descend from a nickname for a quarrelsome person, from Middle High German kīven, kīben or kifen, “to scold, to bicker”.
• Ruled out: a Low German nickname. An older reading from Low German kiver, “quarreller”, does not fit where the name is found.
• Kieffer is a variant of Kiefer in sound or spelling, with the same meanings.

The pine tree does not appear in either entry, not even as a rare possibility.

The dialect form won

The dictionary takes its figures from the German telephone directory of 2005. Telephone listings count households with a landline, not people, but they show the proportions well:

Kiefer ranks 267th among the surnames of Germany, while the standard spelling Küfer is rare. The name followed the way people spoke, not the way the standard language came to spell the word. Kieffer, with a double f, is uncommon in Germany: it is the usual spelling in Moselle, Alsace and Luxembourg, as the article on where Kieffers live shows.

Why the pine keeps coming up

The modern meaning of a word is the first thing anyone finds, and the dialect word for the cooper is missing from most dictionaries. Reference works then start from the tree. The English Wikipedia page for the surname Kiefer, for example, opens with “jaw” and “pine tree” and gives the cooper only as a possibility, marked as needing a source.

Outside Germany the cooper is just as clear. The French genealogist Jean Tosti links Kieffer and Kiefer to the cooper’s trade in Alsace and Lorraine, and researchers on the Luxembourg surname atlas give Kieffer as the Luxembourgish word Kéifer, the cooper. Filae also mentions a nickname for a grumpy man, which matches the DFD’s second, rarer meaning.

What it means for your family

The dictionary describes what is most likely across all Kiefers and Kieffers. It cannot say which reading fits one particular family. In Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg, where the cooper himself was called Kieffer or Kéifer, the trade is the natural explanation. For your own line, the parish registers are the real evidence: the genealogy guide shows where to find them.