Cordesfamily- Background

Background

The surname Cordes is most commonly associated with Germany, Belgium, France and Spain. There are many variations in spelling and not all are related. Most Cordes families in the United States come from Germany but many of them have family histories that claim French or Spanish origins. There have been many migrations in Europe since the Middle Ages when surnames appeared, most notably the Crusades and the Sephardic and Huguenot diasporas, so it cannot be assumed that all Cordes in Germany are of German origin or all Cordes in France are of French origin. In most cases paper trails only go back at most to the late 1600's. The only way to sort out these different origins and try to establish family groups is through YDNA comparison.

This project was begun primarily as a result of postings on genealogical sites by four Cordes men from the U.S., Canada and Australia who had traced their families back to Germany but who had family stories claiming origins in France and Spain.  Three of us, including myself, were able to verify our lineage back to the Kingdom of Hanover, now Niedersachsen, but in spite of these family stories no connection to France or Spain was found.  German genealogists, amateur and professional, seem very skeptical of any story that takes Cordes lineages out of Germany; for them the origin of the name in Germany comes from men named Conrad, or Cord in Northern Germany, who had sons who in turn were referred to as Cords son, Cord's son or Cordes son: for example, if Cord had a son named Hinrich, this Hinrich would be known as Hinrich, Cordes Sohn, and then eventually simply Hinrich Cordes.  So the surname Cordes evolved in this way in German-speaking territories with no connection to any other areas of Europe where the surname Cordes coincidentally occurred.  In the days of genealogical research before the internet, my cousin and I were able to trace our lineage through baptismal and marriage records found for us by pastors and church secretaries in churches in Benton County, Missouri and Ottersberg, Germany on the road from Bremen to Hamburg.  Records were quite well maintained and we were able to go as far back as the mid 1600's with the assurance of researchers that we had no ties to any place other than the heaths of Northern Germany.  This was the end of the story as far as they were concerned.  Almost nothing had been written in English about the Cordes surname in Germany, but there was a well-known Cordes family in colonial South Carolina with documented origins in Southern France not far from the village of Cordes, and there were references to the Cordes surname in books of heraldry which identified two or three Cordes lineages in Belgium and France with descriptions of family crests, but no evidence was available to suggest any ties between these families and the Cordes families of Germany.

Today, however, many new original sources in French, German and Flemish or Dutch have become available on the internet, and I have been able to find sources as early as the 13th century outlining the genealogy of the Belgian, Southern French and German Cordes families. So who is right and who is wrong about the origins of the Cordes surname? One thing is certain: all Cordes families do not share a common ancestor, at least within the last several thousand years.  Some German Cordes are indeed the progeny of a man, or several unrelated men, named Cord.  They are Cord's sons, or Cordes sons.  Other German Cordes may be descended from Belgian de Cordes, or French de Cordes or Cordes. So no one is absolutely right or wrong.  There are many different Cordes stories.  I will explain what I have found.

First, various histories of areas of which are now in Germany, such as Braunschweig, Bremen, Mecklenburg and Hanseatic cities such as Hamburg, Lübeck and Riga all have references to various sons of various unrelated men named Conrad, or Cord, these sons being referred to as Johann, Cord's Sohn, or Heinrich, Cordes Sohn, etc.  There are several such 'Cordes Sohn' as early as the 14th and 15th centuries before surnames were in common usage as they are today. I have not personally found a 'Johann, Cordes Sohn' or a 'Heinrich, Cordes Sohn' referred to in the same writing as Johann Cordes or Heinrich Cordes with Cordes being used as a surname, but German genealogists speak with authority.

A second possible place for people with the Cordes surname to look for their lineage is in Belgium where there is also a village named Cordes and where the noble de Cordes family has existed since the early 1200's.  The genealogy of this family has been researched extensively and is recorded in several genealogical records written in French and Flemish in the 17th and 18th centuries.  It was the family crest of this de Cordes family that was offered to many Cordes households in the U.S. in the 1970's with the disclaimer that it was not intended to be a proof of individual family lineages. It is possible, though I don't know how likely, that some Cordes families outside Belgium are descended from this lineage. In the 1570's, some of these de Cordes who were living in Antwerp intermarried with the Protestant van Bomberghen family, and with the fall of Antwerp to Catholic forces  they were forced to migrate, some to Hamburg where there are many Cordes households today. The possible connection between this Belgian de Cordes family and present day German Cordes families is so far undocumented and purely conjectural.

A third possible source for families with the Cordes surname is in the Forez region of France, now mostly in the Haute-Loire and Puy-de-Dome departments in France.  The de Cordès surname in this region also dates back to the 1200's and 1300's.  The French spelling of the name uses the accent grave on the e, Cordès, in order to preserve the pronunciation of the second syllable, similar to the pronunciation of the name in English and German speaking countries.  There is a Château de Cordès near Orcival, France, in this region which was in the hands of the Chalus family for several centuries.  The Chalus de Cordès family encountered political difficulties in the mid 17th century and so the possibility exists that some members of this family fled to other countries, possibly Germany.  This too is conjecture.

A fourth source to consider is in Southern France in Languedoc and Provence.  This de Cordes family has origins in Catalonia at least as early as 1492.  In February 1493 the patriarch, Ferrand de Cordova whose name became de Cordoue and finally de Cordes migrated from Catalonia to Aurons near Salon-de-Provence in the region around Avignon. This family was ennobled in the mid-1500's and was involved in the political and religious strife of the late 1500's and early 1600's.  Though allied with the Catholic League some members of the family were reported to have given refuge to 'Lutherans' among whom were cousins to the de Cordes family, the Pauls or St Pauls, converts from Judaism to Catholicism in 1512, and ultimately to Lutheranism in the the late 1500's.  I will leave one to draw one's own conclusion regarding the origins of these de Cordes, cousins of the Jewish St  Pauls, and who left Spain shortly after the Alhambra Decree explelling Muslims and Jews from Spain. These Cordes  were also involved in the conflicts between different political factions vying for control of the monarchy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. I have been unable to find any documentation that would directly relate these families of Provence and Languedoc, but the Languedoc Cordes, once established in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1680's claimed the same coat of arms as the de Cordes of Salon-de-Provence, so it might be assumed that they somehow share the same origins in Catalonia. The village of Cordes, known as Cordes-sur-Ciel since the 1990's, is in the Languedoc region where one may find a few families with the Cordes surname.  It is important to note here that even though today the name is generally pronounced Cord rather than Cor-des in France, records from the Tarn department in the early 1900's contain some poetry and historical anecdotes written in the Occitain language of Southwestern France.  In these anecdotes Cordes is spelled Cordas, indicating that the Southern French pronunciation of the name preserved the two syllables, Cor-des, as the name is most often pronounced outside of France today. According to French historical sources the name Cordes in France, whether referring to the surname or various place names such as the villages Cordes(-sur-Ciel) or Cordes Tolosannes, or the mount in Provence, owes its origins to Cordova or Cordoba in Spain, the derivation being Cordova-Cordoua-Cordoue-Cordes, Cordes thus being the Medieval French and Provençal corruption of the original Cordova.

A fifth possible cluster of the Cordes surname may be found in the are between northwestern Spain and Bordeaux, in France.  I have not been able to identify the origins of the Cordes of this region and so far cannot determine if they are related to the Languedoc and Provence Cordes families.  This area was formally the Kingdom of Navarre/Navarra which straddled the border between present-day Spain and France.  There are today some Cordes families in the Bordeaux area.  There are also records of a few Cordes individuals in northwestern Spain and Mexico in the 16th and 17tn centuries.  The only historical reference I can find to the name Cordes in Spain, however, is regarding the village of Cordes/Cordres/Cortes near the city of Tudela, in Navarra.  This is an area that was disputed between Moors and Christians and later between the kingdoms of Navarra and Aragon.  According to some literary critics this Cordres/Cordes/Cortes/Cordoue is the Cordes mentioned in the medieval epic, the Chanson de Roland and certain chansons de geste of the Middle Ages.  Other sources identify Cordes with Cordoba in Andalusia.  It is important to keep this area in mind since there are records in Hamburg documenting the arrival of a Cordes family coming from Spain by way of the Netherlands ca 1590.  There is no mention of France so one might assume that their surname in Spain was Cordes, not Cordova or Cortes and this area of Navarre is the only place in Spain with a topographical name that could have given us the surname Cordes.

It is also important to note here that the Cordes surname can be found in all the seaports associated with the Sephardic diaspora: Marseille, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg and even Mexico and the Philippines.  In all these areas there are Cordes merchants and insurers doing business with notable Sephardic families such as Ruiz and Lopez. 

As for information regarding the origins of the Cordes surname found on surname sites that offer family crests, most of the information I have seen is poorly researched and not reliable.  I have found no evidence to connect the Cordes surname in France to ropes or rope making; as pointed out above, historical sources in France generally point to Cordoba. Spain as a popular source for place names in France.  There does not appear to be any relation between the Cordes surname in France and Germany with the English surnames Cord and variants McCord, Corday, Corde, Cordee, Cordier and Cordie.  All the instances of Cordes in the United Kingdom that I have seen are descendants of Huguenots or immigrants from Germany.

Research can only piece together historical fragments written about random Cordes individuals around the world. I am hopeful that DNA testing can shed some light on how these different Cordes families fit into the whole picture of the Cordes surname.