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Identity - Who are the Wends?The Wends or Sorbs are members of the slavic race of people who were originally located in the area north of the Black sea near the River Dnieper in Asia. In about 500CE, they moved westward mainly along river valleys to northern-central Europe where they settled between the Rivers Elbe and Oder. This occurred following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the devastation of Europe caused by the Huns, Bulgars and Avars in the late 400s. These slavic tribes were early referred to as Venedi, the named germanised to "Wends" and they included five main groups, the Sorbs, the Polabs and Obodrites, the Veletians, the Ploni and the Lusatians. They spoke a slavic language, which is illustrated in surnames such as "Nowak" which means "new man", or in German "Neumann", and "Starick", which means "old man", or in German "Altmann". As the Wends were influenced by the surrounding Germanic or Teutonic tribes from the Middle Ages onwards, wendish slavic names were often germanised, as happened with "Nowak" to "Noack". However, because the Germanic use of the word "Wends" to describe these slavic settlers in the whole of Central Europe and later in Lusatia became a derogatory term, the residents in Lusatia in the 20th century called themselves the Sorbs of Lusatia.
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Wendish settlements in Victoria, Australia Which Wendish families immigrated to Australia? Where did the Wendish people come from? A full listing of names from George Nielsen's Notes |