Emberlin
I have a neighbor whose last name is Emberlin. He is of German descent and he says the name is very prestigious back in Germany. It supposedly belonged to the founding fathers of the city of Berlin hence Em {berlin} in the name. He also has said their is a castle in Germany named after the Emberlin name.
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From my research I can find no trace of the name Emberlin being German. All records are from either England or the US and even the US ones all have English first names.
I believe that the name Emberlin is probably derived from the same source such as names such as Emberson ("son of Emery") and probably means "little Emery" the name Emery plus the English diminutive suffix -lin. Emery is found often as Ember- in English surnames although the name Emery itself is originally of German derivation.Also there is also no such word as 'em' in the German language, although there is the word 'im' meaning "to" or "in" but I can't think of any surnames denoting the place the person is in only where they have come from (eg de, d, di, de la, ov, of etc. NB. all of these prefixes are also used to denote "of/from" a person or occupation not just a location).There may well be a castle named after the Emberlin family in Berlin but I have not researched that.
As only an amateur etymologist and as such I can not be conclusivly sure after only 5 minutes research so feel free to challenge my interpretation. I hope this was of some help.
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The "little Emery" is a good idea. As another theory, it could simply be a combination of the word Ember and the name Lynn. That would make its meaning "ember lake".Array
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Ack! Ignore me!I thought we were talking about a first name. This clearly would NOT be the case for a surname. Sorry!Array
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