Levin

[Andrea Flanagan]

My g-g-granddad took the surname Levin upon entering the US.  Any ideas what its origins are?  I have read of speculation that it was taken from the French Le Vin (the vine), but that doesn't seem likely to me.

[Mats Ahlgren]

Andrea
 
Some of my relatives that moved to US created their new name using the whole or parts of the parish name, either where they were born or where they lived before emigration.
 
Mats

[Bo Johansson]

Perhaps he just liked the name.
 
Or he might have been from a place named Levene, Leversta, Levsäng, etc.
 
// Bo Johansson

[Kurt Persson]

Levin is a common name in Sweden, usually worn by soldiers. Also anyone may take any familyname until the end of the nineteenth century. Just register in the parish books. We have many Levin here in the south of Schweden
Regards  
Kurt Persson

[Thomas Vikander]

In any case, le vin means the wine. Not a bad surname, I say !  
And la vigne means the vine. And, of course Lavigne is also a surname, a nice one too.

[Andrea Flanagan]

Thanks for your help, and I stand corrected in my French translation!

[Anna-Carin Betzén]

Andrea, if you go to Swedish Roots and click on Swedish names, there's a general introduction to how Swedish surnames are formed.  
 
-in is a pretty common suffix in later Swedish surnames, though that page doesn't mention it. I've read about this somewhere else but I can't recall where so I may be wrong in some details: In the 1700s when France had great influence on fashionable society, French-sounding -in and -?n surname endings were introduced. First they became popular with the upper classes, but by the late 1800s the French origins were forgotten and the now supposedly Swedish suffix had spread to all levels of society. At this time many people abandoned their patronymics (father's name + 's son or 's daughter, though in Swedish of course) and created new surnames for themselves, often using a place name as a root as Mats said above, and sticking on the -in or -?n suffix so it sounded like a proper surname. My own surname was taken in that way, as late as in the 1920s I think.
 
If you find out where your ancestor came from, you'll probably find the origin of the name as well.

[Karl-Henrik Rydén]

Andrea,  
 
My grandmother had two sisters, Ida and Elin, who emigrated to America. Ida and her husband, Johan August Pettersson, changed their family name to Levin upon settling in Lindsborg, Kansas.  
I heard that the reason for them to use this family name was that they had heard a pastor or priest with this name that impressed them.  
I think it is sometimes hard to know exactly why someone decided to change to a certain name. For me the name Levin does not directly make any associations to a place in Sweden.