Origins of a Surname - Possibly Eastern European, Russian or Polish?

[vic_vega66]

Hi, I've been doing some research into my family tree and I've come accross a real puzzle

Comments

[dmytrish]

Nothing meaningful in neither Russian nor Ukrainian. If it was of Polish origin it would likely contain "w" instead of "v".

[ms_cucumber]

I did a quick Google and it seems to be French, more commonly spelled Thevenin.

[anonym_mouse]

Google for collections of jewish names, you'll have a better chance there. American jews love (semi-invented) stories about their "european roots" ("fiddler on the roof" stands at the absolute apex of those dreams in the american jewish mind; american jews also believe lots of nationalistic mythical rubbish e.g. that popular foods from various European countries like goulash, borstch, potato pancakes, bagels and even croissants are of jewish origin).

For example - let's see what a 3-5 minute lookup on the Net could get us
(a) this sounds non-slavonic to me (though God knows how much a name could have been changed by how many clerks in unknown offices)
(b) possible corruptions/linguistic consonant substitutes might be, generally speaking
"Tevenin" - ?? Tvenin -- ?? tvelin (both "tv" and "lin/in" are common in jewish surnames)

Then one list of jewish surnames shows "tewel - tewele", and immediately

"Hirschel, Solomon ........In 1802 he succeeded Tewele Schiff, as chief rabbi of the German and Polish congregation of Jews in London

[biascut]

I don't think you read the original post properly? The OP doesn't sound worried at all! :)

[re_gatta]

I have tried to transliterate this surname into cyrillic (that would be Тевенин) and look for it at the Russian web, and it only gives me Frenchmen (like Léon Charles Thévenin that owns Thévenin's theorem, Charles Thévenin, a painter, Gilles Thevenin, a perfumer etc), so I belive it is of French origin.

[anonym_mouse]

Yep, you guys must be right:

(a) "the house of Lubin is one of the France's oldes perfume houses..."
Gilles Thevenin is the actual owner of Lubin, who, with the support of former
owners and perfumers who reorchestrated their old formulas, rescued
the house from bankruptcy and opened a new page in its history in 1998.

(b) and here is a lot of what seems non-jewish Thevenins
http://www3.familyoldphotos.com/category/surnames/thevenin

So it might be French after all.

AND MORE:

Origins of Gallia County Place Names

[das_r2d2]

probably French
E.g. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Charles_Thévenin
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théorème_de_Thévenin