Last name origin & meaning: English and German: from a Middle English personal name,
Ode, in which personal names of several different origins have
coalesced: principally Old English Od(d)a, Old Norse
Od(d)a and Continental Germanic Odo, Otto. The
first two are short forms of names with the first element Old English
ord, Old Norse odd ‘point of a weapon’. The Continental
Germanic names are from a short form of compound names with the first
element od- ‘possessions’, ‘riches’. The situation is further
confused by the fact that all of these names were Latinized as
Odo. Odo was the name of the half-brother of the Conqueror,
archbishop of Bayeux, who accompanied the Norman expedition to England
and was rewarded with 439 confiscated manors. The German name Odo or
Otto was a hereditary name in the Saxon ruling house, as well as being
borne by Otto von Wittelsbach, who founded the Bavarian ruling dynasty
in the 11th century, and the 12th-century Otto of Bamberg, apostle of
Pomerania.
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