A few weeks ago, our German tutor mentioned that he thought my last name, Swope, was an Anglicized version of the German name, Swab or Schwab, referring to someone from Swabia. He went on to say that, nowadays in Germany, to call someone a Swabian is effectively calling them an ignorant, ill-mannered Barbarian. This morning, I thought I'd do a little digging to see if he was right. It turns out that he is.
The Swabians were a western Germanic tribe (labeled barbarians by the Romans) that dates back to the first century BC. They gained prominence as they moved south into Roman territory as that empire was waning around 400AD. Other Germanic tribes from the east that also emigrated around the same time were the Vandals and Visigoths, whose names were more familiar to me than the Swabians. The word, barbarian, carries a lot of meaning in modern language, but I believe it derives from an original Greek word that simply means "stranger" or "foreigner".
In any case, it appears the Swabians were a fairly influential, and sophisticated, people for several centuries across large portions of, formerly-Roman, Europe, but their primary region was Southern Germany. Their territory included the modern German states/regions of Baden (including the modern-day cities of Munich & Freiburg), Bavaria (including the entire Black Forest), northern Switzerland (including modern-day Basel and Lake Constance), southeast into Austria, and west into France (Alsace region and modern Strasbourg). I even found one source that mentions how influential they were as far west as Portugal. They did fight amongst themselves, with the Romans, and with their fellow Germanic neighbors from time to time, but they weren't as overly warlike as the Visigoths and some other barbarian tribes. They were very successful farmers and herdsmen. The Swabians were said to have adopted much from the Romans and to have integrated well with the local Helvetii, a Celtic tribe who were an early (and prominent) people that settled much of what would become Switzerland. To this day, Switzerland's official Latin name is Confederatio Helvetica and the female personification of the country, similar to America's Columbia, is named Helvetia in honor of those people.
I marvel at the irony that I moved thousands of miles from my home country and, by coincidence, now live within (or at least within a very few kilometers of) the ancestral homeland of the people who gave me my name.
Again, you may already know all this, but in case you didn't, I also learned that genealogical research conducted by others reveals that the first "Swope" (Jost Schwab) emigrated from Baden, Germany to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1709 with his family. He was followed by Jakob Schwob from Switzerland in 1749 who settled nearby in Lebanon County, PA. They were both skilled craftsmen in their home countries, but became farmers after relocating to the US and most of their direct descendants continued the farming tradition. Another source I found suggests that Jost's daughter preceded him to the US with her husband and may have officially been the first "Swope" in America, but she was married and, thus, had her husband's name. Yet another source points to Conrad and Philip Schwab as the first "Swopes" in America in 1709, followed by Joggi (this name seems pretty close to Jakob, imo) and Hans Michael Schwab in 1749, and Adam Schwabel in 1754. All three sources agree that these early immigrants all arrived into the port of Philadelphia and settled in Pennsylvania.
Perhaps you've already done similar research of your own, but this is all new to me. Here are some sources I found:
http://www.cynthiaswope.com/withinthevines/yost.html
http://worldroots.com/brigitte/swope/swop1.htm
http://libro.uca.edu/stanislawski/Chap9.htm
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~banatdata/Glogowatz/FrankGerner/Coins.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian
A couple interesting remarks about the ancient Swabians are that they preferred fighting over farming, but that they were extremely accomplished farmers and made great use of fertile lands throughout the areas they occupied, especially between the Danube and Rhein rivers.
Fritz Rahn, who I believe was a German linguist or anthropologist, had this to say about the Swabians (at least the modern decendants) according to Wikipedia:
"It has been evident for a long time that, of all members of all the Germanic tribes, the Swabian is the most difficult to understand and the most mysterious. In him the most intense contradictions are found. Often, in one individual, meet both extreme boldness and amazing timidity, rebelliousness and philistinism, winning kindness and resentful standoffishness, skillfulness and awkwardness, firmness and instability, mistrust and friendliness, soaring idealism and grounded realisticism."
Hope you found this as interesting and informative as I did.
