Braun
'The brown one' — the German Brown, arrived at separately.
- Origin
- German
- Famous bearer
- Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), rocket engineer
- Register
- German family
The seat of Braun
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Braun community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Braun has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Braun clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Braun clan →What does the Braun name mean?
Descriptive — Middle High German brūn, brown — for brown hair, a brown complexion or brown clothing. The exact German twin of English Brown.
The history of Braun
Braun marked the brown-haired man, and is one of those plain colour-surnames that German and English each invented for themselves out of the same need — to tell one Hans, one John, from another. It is common across the whole German-speaking area.
It carries one of the largest reputations and one of the longest shadows of any German name in America, in Wernher von Braun — the rocket engineer who built the V-2 for the Third Reich and then, transplanted to Alabama, the Saturn V that put men on the Moon. The same name, two regimes, the whole vexed bargain of the 20th-century émigré in a single life.
Explore With Your Ancestors · Beta
Pick any year from 500 to 1945 and any place on earth — the Braun country, or a shore no Braun ever reached. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.
Notable bearers of the Braun name
- Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), rocket engineer