German

Suffix

-ens

1. plural suffix for family names that end in a sibilant consonant

   Schmitz → (die) Schmitzens (“the Schmitzes, “the Schmitz family”)

   Pütz → (die) Pützens (“the Pützes, “the Pütz family”)

Etymology 2

Suffix

-ens

1. (dated) genitive suffix for personal names that end in a sibilant consonant

   Max → Maxens Vater (“Max’ father”)

   Klaus → Klausens Mutter (“Klaus’ mother”)

2. (dated) genitive suffix for personal names that end in -ia

   Claudia → Claudiens Tochter (“Claudia’s daughter”)

   Maria → Mariens Sohn (“Mary’s son”)

Usage notes

• In contemporary usage the genitive is usually left unchanged after sibilants, and indicated with an apostrophe in writing: Max’ Vater. Such unchanged genitives, in turn, are often avoided and paraphrased: der Vater von Max (colloquially: vom Max).
• The genitive is formed with -s after -ia: Claudias, Marias. Only the form Mariens remains current, but it is restricted to the Virgin Mary.

Etymology 3

Suffix

-ens

1. forms adverbs from superlatives and ordinal numbers

   der erste ‎(“the first”) → erstens ‎(“firstly”)

   am meisten ‎(“most”) → meistens ‎(“mostly”)

   am besten ‎(“best”) → bestens ‎(“very well; best”)

   am frühesten ‎(“earliest”) → frühestens ‎(“at the earliest”)

Usage notes

• Adverbs in -ens often have an absolute superlative sense, meaning “at most, maximally” or “very much, exceedingly”. These forms are widely lexicalized, however. That is to say that they cannot be formed freely, except in poetic or humorous language.

References

• canoo.net: Personennamen
• duden.de: Beugung von Personennamen, Ehrenrettung für Großmutters Apfelkuchen

Hungarian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ɛnʃ]

Suffix

-ens

1. A distinguishable foreign word ending in nouns and adjectives. It is not considerable as an independent Hungarian suffix.

   ágens ‎(“agent”)

   dekadens ‎(“decadent”)

Usage notes

• Harmonic variants:

  -áns added to back vowel words

  -ens added to front vowel words

Derived terms

See also

• Appendix:Hungarian suffixes

References

• Attila Mártonfi: The System of the Hungarian Suffixes, Theses of PhD Dissertation, Budapest, 2006

Latvian

Suffix

-ens

1. Added to nouns to form new nouns; possibly simply a variant of -enis.

Related terms

• -enis
• -ene
• -ēns

Derived terms