What does the name Totten mean?

Answer 1

Totten is derived from Toten - a German word for dead, as in the punk rock band "Die Toten Hosen" (The dead trousers!). Hopefully, this means they were either morticians or those who removed the dead during the plague - not murderers. The Domesday book, by assuming that no one had a surname until the Brits gave them one, lists the name as a diminutive of "tot" to mean village fool or idiot! That's of course the one that most people buy into. Being a Totten, myself, I was not willing to buy into it. It's demeaning and insulting and lazy that Ancestry.com and other sites use the Domesday definition. I started searching the name after a DNA test that showed eastern European and Germanic heritage. There is the Totten Mountain ski resort in Hemsdale, Norway and also the Oeste and Vestre (East and West) Totten region in southern Norway. A likely scenario for migration of the Totens (Tottens) is north to Norway, East to Ireland, Scotland, then England, and of course to the U.S.A. Please, prove me wrong.....if you don't believe this, look it up for yourself.