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.