Is there or was there a river or region called "der Ahe"?
 

I am trying to find out if it really exists/existed. It's part of my name name and a language instructor said "der Ahe" was a region or river in Holland.
i would love to see/visit it on my upcoming trip if possible.

Are you sure that is the way it is spelled? In Dutch the letters ij are pronounced as "I", as in "Ijselmeer". So if this is the correct spelling he was talking about the Ij river. That is the large river that runs behind Central Station in Amsterdam.

I may be all wrong about this, as I only lived in the Netherlands for about six months, and only speak a few words of Dutch. Perhaps one of the folks from Holland, like hetismij, can put this one to bed.

:-)

well my families name was Von der Ahe before coming to the U.S. before my great grandfather. Of course it was shortened and changed once here. i wa always told it was Dutch but "Von der" means "from the" in German. So who knows for sure:/

You are probably right. I just thought that the name may have been too difficult for the immigration chap at Ellis Island, and he might have changed the spelling of the name phonetically, as they often did.

You are probably aware of the famous baseball Von der Ahe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_von_der_Ahe

Perhaps a trip to Holland would be in order, just to find out more.

:-)

I think the Dutch mostly use "van" instead of "von", don't they, like in Rembrandt VAN Rijn.

Anyway, there is a town called Ahe, in Niedersachsen, Germany. Chris von der Ahe, mentioned in the above post, emigrated from Germany. I think it is more likely that your name is German than Dutch, altho that is just my opinion.

It certainly sounds more German than Dutch, van de(r) would be Dutch. There are a couple of rivers called Aa, but I've haven't heard of anywhere here called Ahe. Va Aa, and van Ee (another river) are Dutch names.
There is a German voice actor (who dubs US TV programmes and films) called Antje von der Ahe, so it would seem more likely to be German in origin.
However that doesn't mean that your family didn't emigrate from the Netherlands - over the centuries lots of Germans, for a wide variety of reasons, have found a home/sanctuary in the Netherlands.

Hang on a minute! looks like I could be wrong - I just found a Dutch site about the family name van der Aa, and one of the variations in the name spelling is van der Ahe (with an a, not an o)- so you could be Dutch after all.
It does come from the name of the rivers. The most famous/noble family van der Aa lived in Nieuwer ter Aa near Breukelen (Brooklyn!) which is near Utrecht. Another group come from Den Bosch, but it is a name found throughout the Netherlands.

Hi laurel; This is a good site to ask any questions about family names/desendants. Just go to the country of choice and 'post' your question. ENJOY iris1745/dick www.genforum.genealogy.com/

Thanks everbody for all your help. I will keep researching too. Still hoping what Ive been told my whole life is "True" that we were Dutch. I really wanted to see some of our "Homeland". No matter I will still be there in May 2009. Yeah I can't wait to get there!

I would've sworn I drank German wine from a region called "The Ahe" but a Google search brings up no real info. I thought that it came from somewhere near Trier.

Otzi there is a region in Noordrhein Westfalia called der Ahe.

Wow you are all great. So apparently I'm German. Well that will excite my daughter as she was born there. I will just secretly claim Holland too though. lol

What's dissappointing is that I actually lived in Germany for many years and never looked there because I was told it was in Holland. :(
I guess it's just another excuse to plan another trip to Europe next year hahahaha

Well, as others have said, your ancestors could have been Dutch who emigrated to Germany years ago!

Ahe is an ancient German word for river or waters. BTW, it is "die Ahe". "Von der Ahe" means someone living by a river.

If you can read German, take a look at Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahe

There are two rivers in Germany called Ahe, and several places called Ahe.

Lauren you could still be Dutch, as I said it van der Ahe is an alternative spelling of the name van der Aa. That it became Von could be due to your family emigrating and the spelling being misread at some point - in some hand scripts a and o are very similar after all.
Enjoy your trip to the Netherlands. Try and visit Nieuwer ter Aa whilst you are here - it may be the ancestral home :)

Or German speaking Swiss from the region of the river Aar/ Aare, a tributary of the Rhine?

I second the Aare possibility! When you pronounce them in German, Ahe and Aare sound very much the same...

Maybe the name came from the day your dissenting ancestors were chased out of Catholic Germany and into Protestant Holland; as soon as they reached the safety of the Netherlands, Great Great Great Grandpa exclaimed: "Aha!!! So now ve are in Hollant!!"

>I would've sworn I drank German wine from a region called "The Ahe" but a Google search brings up no real info. I thought that it came from somewhere near Trier.

Not Ahe but Ahr is the name of the wine region.
A river flowing into the Rhine from west between Koblenz and Bonn. Altenahr, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, and Remagen at the river mouth are the best-known towns, and there are a number of wine villages in between.

-

BTW, there is a noble German family named "von der Ahé" - note accent.

Just another possible angle...Might it have been "Pennsylvania Dutch"? This is a very commonly used designation for the (mostly German) Protestants who settled in Penn's tolerant colony. There are a few theories as to why this name may be used, ranging from "Deutsch" in German to the idea of the Netherlands at one time being part of the Holy Roman Empire and a "Germanic" people. The PA Dutch are probably most known now as the Amish and Mennonites, but a great many Lutherans and other Protestant sects are included.

Happy info hunting!

Wow I love where this post is going. All the possibilities are endless but exhilerating. What fun it is learning about our ancestors' It reminds me of a commercial that plays in the US about a young man taking his father to see their ancestors in Sweden onlt to tour the country, go to the records office and find they were actually Irish..So begins there next journey together. lol

Quokka - you're right!!! Must've drunk too much of that stuff, hence the brain fart.

So! I came upon this while googling my last name, go figure. It is indeed Dutch, not German, though it does have some roots in German (the languages are sisters). It was a river, not a town, that we are named for. Our ancestor's land was located on/around this river. The "von" stands for royalty, "van" was a more common way of saying the same thing ("from"). So, once upon a time, we were a family of semi-aristocratic land-owners in the Netherlands. There is so much rich history in our name, it is truly something to be proud of (check out Chris von der Ahe, Charles Theodore vdA, ect.) I hope this helps you out!! Signed, a fellow "Ahe"

In French Flanders, there is a river called Aa. ;)

Von Der Ahe
 

My ancestor Hinrich Von Der Ahe arrived in Hille, Westphalia about 1660. That portion of Prussia underwent a great deal of immigration at the behest of the Great Elector, Frederick William who particularly brought in Huguenots from Alsace. In Alsace, there is a village of AHE near Frieburg which was decimated by the 30 Years War not long before and which had many Huguenots apparently anxious to relocate. The region was known for its waterways. Branches of the family have ended up all over the world.

While this thread has reached a somewhat noble age before being resurrected, just a remark for those trying to find their ancestors.

In Germany, the combination of "von" plus article, e.g. "von der", "von dem" or shortened to "vom" and a place name usually does not reflect any nobility. Especially when the place name is not a fully-fledged territory but a mere geographical feature like a river or hill or something else.
In English it would shift the meaning of "von" from "of" (as in the Duke of Essex) to "from" (I don't think there is an English equivalent).

Von der Ahe is even more vague, as Ahe or Aa means just small river/creek, and is usually accompagnied by another designator like the name of the region it runs through. And it only had a precise meaning in the context of that small region where the family came from, which probably had just one river. So Heinrich von der Ahe means not more than Henry from the river. In general, these names are quite old as they originate from times when ordinary people had no family names but just first names plus something that designated their profession (Miller, Smith,..) or anything else that could have been helpful to identify them.