Scholl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A German family name, best known through Hans and Sophie, the siblings executed in 1943 for their anti-Nazi White Rose resistance
2. A surname of German origin, most famously carried by the sibling pair who opposed the Nazi regime through the White Rose group
3. Used as a German surname, especially for the brother and sister who were executed for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich

Etymology: "Scholl" is a surname rather than a common English word, and its origins are tied to ordinary German and Dutch vocabulary. In German, "Scholle" means a clod of earth, the kind turned up by a plough, and a family name drawn from it would likely have originally identified someone who lived or worked on such land. The same surname form can also come from the Dutch and north German "schol," meaning flounder, a fish that lies flat on the seabed, so the name may have been a nickname or an occupational tag connected to fishing in some families. The name has a third possible source too: it is also a German spelling variant of "Schell," so some bearers of the surname trace their line to that older form instead. Because the same spelling can arise from three different roots, the name does not point to a single ancestral origin. Each family's history depends on which of these paths it followed.