Hans Ryeff

  Noted events in his life were:

• Name Sake. ⁷¹⁶ The original spelling of Reiff is pronounced to rhyme with life, the German ei having a long i sound. Changing through the centuries the name mutated to its present forms of Reiff, Reif, Rieff, Rief, Riffe and Rife. Some Reiff emigrants retained the name as Reiff, Reif, Rieff or Rief, others changed the spelling to Riffe or Rife but retained the original pronunciation. Often Germans names such as Rhein when written in English the e is transposed to the end and becomes Rhine. So the Americanized spelling of Riffe, also with the e transposed to the end, is a somewhat logical translation. The Reiff name took its initial formation between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and was first recorded as a descriptive identification to distinguish one person from another. By 1300, Reiff had become a recognized surname and was passed on to others in the family. The name is of Germanic origin but its meaning is questionable. In Europe the name is often written Rief, Riefe, Rieff, Reiff, Reiffe, Rÿeff and Rÿff. There is the possibility that the name had its origin in the German nouns reifen that means ring, hoop, or wheel; or reif that means frost; or in the German adjective reif that means ripe or mature. In speaking of fruit in English we say it is ? ripe for harvest, in German ? reif zur ernde. Reviewing old court and deed records, the researcher meets with the diverse and varied way our ancestors spell their own name. In this age of automation where we are named, numbered, cataloged and indexed by government and private computers, it is at first difficult to comprehend why our ancestor?s surnames were spelled so many different ways. Elsdon C. Smith, in his publication American Surnames, explains surname variations in this manner. ?What is today spelled in just one way had many origins among peoples the great majority of whom were illiterate. Even educated men spelled as fancy dictated at the moment. The influx of names into the United States from non-British sources . . . forced the wide extension of the legal rule of idem sonans, which provides that a slight variation in the spelling of a name is immaterial if both modes of spelling have approximately the same sound. Names that sound alike are the same although spelled differently. The law regards the sound more than the spelling.? American courts throughout the history of the United States have upheld this doctrine and ruled that couplets such as Reiff and Ryphe are indeed the same name. My ancestor, Johann Georg Reiff, emmigrated from the Palatinate Province of Germany to Pennsylvania about 1700. His name was frequently written John or Hans George Reiff as well as other various ways. John is an Americanization of Johann; Hans, often a stand alone name, is a German diminutive of Johann.

German, shortened form of Rifo, a pet form of Ricfrid 'rule, peace'; also spelled REIF. (What Is In Your Name by vitalog.net)

Hans married Elsi Unknown about 1560 in Wadenswil, Switzerland.⁷¹⁴