Familiennamen in Flandern, den Niederlanden und Deutschland - ein diachroner und synchroner Vergleich

This article compares the prototypical (i. e. the most frequent) surnames of three neighbouring regions: The Netherlands, Flanders, and Germany. It concentrates on the surname’s emergence, development, their lexical sources and their current distribution. The latter is documented by maps based on telephone or official registers. Only some of the regional differences can be explained by cultural or historical factors. An important result is that onomastic landscapes do not follow national or linguistic borders.