Altena Family History

Dutch and North German: habitational name from any of several places and houses so named. For a long time the placename has been explained as al te na ‘too close’ referring to its location nearby another object.

Possibly this associative explanation has been applied for some Altena places indeed, but in North Brabant the toponym Land of Altena with the castle of the noblemen of Altena seems to be adopted from an old river name Huolthena (996).

This old river name probably means olten a ‘old a’, a being a general noun for ‘waterway’.