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Geier is a German word for "vulture". Geier is also a surname and place name.

The disputed etymological origins of the word Geier have confounded ornithological usage of the term in poetry, literature, biblical scholarship, and English-language dictionary and encyclopedia entries, while spawning several literary and philological misunderstandings and controversies. The surname Geier also has different and somewhat inconsistent origins, traditions and meanings, and the heraldry associated with the surname likewise is confused.

Ornithology

The modern German term Geier is generally recognized as referring to two distinct families of carrion-eating bird whose range includes the whole of Europe and the western part of Asia. Geier refers both to birds from the genus Old World vulture (Aegypiinae) and the family New World vulture (Cathartidae).

In English usage, the word Geier has been associated with both the Gyrfalcon and the Lammergeier although neither is synonymous with “Geier”. For example, "gyrfalcon" is thought to come from French gerfaucon, which is written in mediaeval Latin as gyrofalco, but the first part of the word also is said to come from Old High German gîr (now Geier), as in "vulture" The modifier, "Gyr", “Gier” or "Geier" preceding the word "falcon" is now thought to be a reference to the large size of the bird rather than to its genus or family, but it has not always been so regarded.

Earlier inaccurate and misleading conflations of these disparate terms resulted from reliance on imprecise Biblical translations and metaphorical impressions rather than on direct anatomical or behavioral observations of the bird species themselves. In the King James Version of the Bible, in Leviticus xi, 13; Deuteronomy xiv, 17), the term "Gyrfalcon" referred to an unclean bird, most likely an Egyptian vulture, rather than to the modern Gyrfalcon, and did not refer to a falcon or an eagle. These Biblical references to "Gyrfalcon" (or sometimes "Gierfalcon") probably were a misinterpretation of a Hebrew term more properly translated either as Egyptian vulture or Lammergeier, the latter also known as the "lamb-vulture" or the "bone-breaker vulture", or historically as the "bone crusher" or Ossifrage).

This etymological confusion has produced taxonomic confusion, as well. Some authorities actually proclaimed uncertainty whether the Geier is a vulture or an eagle, and older dictionaries used the terms “Geier”, “Gyrfalcon” and “Lammergeier”, almost interchangeably, e.g. Webster's 1913 Dictionary). Poets and others often assumed that the term Geier refers to a form of eagle or falcon, rather than a vulture, a matter that was commented upon in the article by Harriet C. Stanton, Poets and Birds: a Criticism, The Atlantic monthly. / Volume 52, Issue 311, September 1883. * Even some encyclopedia writers adopted the view that the Lammergeier "is more closely allied with the eagles than with the vultures", as in the 11th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.

Taxonomic confusion may have resulted from the physical appearance of the Lammergeier. Because the head of the Lammergeier, unlike most other vultures, is feathered rather than naked, it bears a resemblance to the eagle or condor. “Gyrfalcon” is also sometimes rendered as "Geir eagle", as in *), although in modern usage a Gyrfalcon is a member of the falcon family and is not an eagle. The Indian Vulture, another true vulture species recently recategorized as critically endangered, also was described as having a distinctly "eagle-like bearing" in contrast to most other vulture species.

The modern taxonomic distinction between the families of eagles or falcons and the families of vultures should eliminate any uncertainty over the respective meanings of the term Geier. The Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) and the Lammergeier (Gypaetus barbatus) are true carrion-eating vultures. The term "Geier" should not be applied to the modern Gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus); the Gyrfalcon is a distinct species of falcon (the largest of the falcon family), and is not a vulture.

Surname

Geier is a common surname in Germany and German-American people. It is also found as a French surname, and as Russian surname. The latter probably is associated with German emigration to Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries. The surname Geier is often considered to be interchangeable with Geyer, although some sources ascribe a different origin and meaning to the two surnames.

Many using the surname Geier share an oral history attributing its origins to a heroic band of peasant villagers who climbed high to an aerie and clubbed to death a gigantic raptor (a Geier) who had been stealing and eating human babies from their village. See German family name etymology

As with the surname "Geier", the surname "Geyer" is primarily associated with the word "vulture". This is often used in a pejorative sense, however. When affixed to a Jewish family, the surname "Geier" is thought by some to have a slightly different meaning. The Yiddish word Geyer means "peddler", and it is assumed that when last names became mandatory in Europe, the surname Geier was imposed upon Jewish peasants as a deprecatory label connoting a scheming merchant who takes advantage of the cupidity of others, i.e., a "vulture". The word "Geier" more recently has evolved as a "derogatory term for persons from the Middle East."

A significant number of African American people with the surname Geier are found in Washington D.C. and across the Southern States, the European antecedents of which are unknown. As with the surnames of many African American families (See Dunaway, Wilma A., The African American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 259-60), it is likely that the names were adopted from a European American slaveowner by the name of "Geier", but none has been identified to date.

Coats of Arms

The etymological confusion associated with ornithological use of the term "Geier" also has affected family coats of arms and traditions concerning family origins of those bearing the Geier surname. Some oral traditions and family histories associate the Geier surname with the eagle (as in the "Eagle's Nest" coat of arms) and with a peasant legend concerning a baby-stealing bird of prey in a medieval Swabian or Saxon village. *German family name etymology. Others associate the surname with the carrion-eating, bone-crushing variety of vulture. *. See also *. In modern times, it is not unusual for the vulture in family coats of arms or logos to be rendered as a comical caricature of a slumping and sad-sack buzzard rather than a lammergeier or gyrfalcon with "the bearing of an eagle."

Place name

The word Geier spelled "Geyer" is a place name for a village in Saxony by that name. An Austrian town known as Geiersberg im Innkreis follows the preferred spelling of Geier and sometimes is associated with the place of origin of the surname Geier, as well. The castle of Florian Geier, in Giebelstadt has been used to stage dramas commemorating its famous first occupant, but has not otherwise conferred place name recognition on the Swabian region south of Würzburg where it is located.

Literary History"

The ornithological and etymological confusions posed by the name or word "Geier" have led to some interesting and sometimes comical confusions in literary uses of the term, as well.

Walter Scott

The setting of the romantic novel by Walter Scott, Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden Of The Mist set in Saxony, is more likely the Swiss mountain known as "Geierstein", rather than the Saxon village Geyer typically associated with the origins of the name Geier or Geyer. The Austrian town of Geiersberg im Innkreis bears a similar name, but most of the novel takes place in Switzerland rather than Austria.

Sigmund Freud

A celebrated episode in the history of psychoanalytic theory has been attributed to Sigmund Freud's misreading of the Italian word for "kite" as "vulture", mistranslating it as the German word "Geier" and building upon it a somewhat pornographic interpretation of one of Leonardo Da Vinci's dreams.

Florian Geier

The most common references to the word Geier in literary history have been associated with Florian Geyer, also known as Florian Geier, as discussed in the next section. Aside from his prominent place in Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (1850), Florian Geier was also the problematic hero of one of Gerhart Hauptmann's major plays, the historical drama entitled Florian Geyer, also known as Florian Geier, published in 1896. The German folk anthem, "Wir sind des Geyers schwarzer Haufen" ("We are the Black Band of Geyer") is now a radical union hymn in the United States and Australia. *

Franz Kafka

Kafka's tale "Der Geier", in English "The Vulture", may derive symbolic meaning from many of these connotations. It was published after Freud's 1910 publication on Leonardo and the vulture, but before the 1926 revelation that Leonardo's dream had been mistranslated in Freud's interpretation.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, famously suggested that the archetypically Aryan and anti-Semitic composer, Richard Wagner, was of Jewish ancestry, and Wagner himself may have believed this. In a footnote to his essay, Der Fall Wagner, entitled Nachtschrift, published as a foreword to Wagner's autobiography, Nietzsche made the comment, "Ein Geyer ist beinahe schon ein Adler" ("A vulture is almost an eagle"), essentially asserting that Wagner's biological father was actually his mother's second husband, the presumptively Jewish actor and playwright, Ludwig Geyer, rather than his putative and presumptively Aryan father, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner. This example of the Jewish connotations of the name in its alternate spelling as Geyer is discussed by Roger Hollinrake in The Title-Page of Wagner's 'Mein Leben', published in Music & Letters, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Oct., 1970), pp. 415-422. See also Silk, M.S. & Stern, J. P., Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.202.

People

• Florian Geyer, a Franconian nobleman who sided with the peasants in the Peasants War in the early 16th century
• Phil Geier, American baselball players

Ships

Several ships of German registry have borne the name Geier. These included:

• The Geier (1916-1917) a captured British freighter named St. Theodore, which was scuttled by the Germans near the end of World War I. .
• The SMS Geier, a German sloop which put into the then-neutral United States port at Honolulu, Hawaii, at the onset of World War I, but was seized by a crew from the United States cruiser USS St. Louis upon the United States' entering the war, and after a protracted international legal dispute, re-commissioned in the United States Navy as the USS Schurz and eventually sunk following a collision off the coast of North Carolina.
• The Geier, a German patrol boat carrying a crew of 40, currently in the 7th Fast Patrol Boat (FPB) Squadron and scheduled to be sold to the Tunisian Navy.

Other usages

• Geier Hitch
• Geier Indians, a small group of Indians supposed to have been encamped "under the name Papuliquier, which is a fusion of two group names, Pacpul and Geier" in the years 1675-1707 in Frio County, Texas. The origins of the tribal label "Geier" are obscure if not apocryphal. In this context, the word "Geier" may be a mistranscription of the Spanish word Quier (a form of English want), or it may be a mistranscription or transliteration of the Spanish word Guiar (Spanish for "guide" or "lead"), rather than an accurate phonetic rendition of the tribal name from its own language.

Geier is also the name of a bakery chain in Vienna, Austria.

References

1. Coco, J.M. (2002). Freud, Leonardo Da Vinci, and The Vulture's Tail: A Refreshing Look At Leonardo's Sexuality. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 50:1375-1383

• Surnames
• German words and phrases