Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Vincent Immer wrote:
> My name is Vincent IMMER, not jewish from swiss/french origin and living in 
> Israel for 10 years now. I am wondering what is the real origin of my 
> familly name.
> I thought it comes from german, IMMER, which means ALLWAYS.
> I just discovered that this familly name, IMMER or IMME^R, (or IMER 
> sometimes) in english, appears in the Bible related to Cohen people, priest 
> in exil in Babylon.
> I wondered why the hebrew name was translated in latin with two m?
> And also I wondered what is the root of this word or its meaning, I read on 
> this list the it means CONSERVED, or GUARDED (which is in this case not so 
> far from the meaning ALLWAYS by the way....).
> By the way in searching other mentions of this word in the bible I found it 
> 9 times, it sounds sometimes as a location more than a familly name like 
> "the people from the location immer", might it be possible too?
> Thank you for you help

As for your surname, you should try to trace your family back to the
19th century at
least, to find out where they were from.  Then you should try to look
up a specialized
surname dictionary for the locale in question.  Immer would have
different sources
depending on whether it was a surname in Britain, the US, Germany, 
Switzerland,
etc.  If you have a Jewish background (or some other ethnic
background), that would
also be useful to pin it down.  It is unlikely to be German Immer =
Always, in part
because the names do change over time and the way the two words look the same
today does not mean that is how it was in the past.

As for the Hebrew, the word Immer in Hebrew means "young lamb."  It is
probably the
word in Gen 49:21.  Place names meaning Immer are comparable to other
place names
referring to livestock such as Ayyalon or Eglon.  The name is also
comparable to other
personal names deriving from animals.  The double m in the Latin
transcription is the
way the Latin treats the gemination/dagesh -- the dot in the Mem.
This dot is absent
in Gen 49:21 so either it dropped in natural phonetic processes, or
the word was
confused with )imre "words of", or both.  The name Immer is attested
on a bulla found
in the Temple Mount sifting project:
http://toldot.blogspot.com/2006/04/jerusalem-conference-and-temple-mount.html

There were no "family names" in Biblical times.  Surnames are quite a recent
phenomenon.

Yitzhak Sapir