Warkentin

Warkentin is a surname of German-Russian Mennonite origin. Notable people with the surname include:

• Chris Warkentin (born 1978), Canadian politician
• E.H. Warkentin (1933–20??), American politician and businessman
• Lindsay Warkentin (born 1982), Canadian curler
• Mark Warkentin (born 1979), American swimmer
• Sabine Warkentin (born 1941), French chess master

The name derives from the settlement Wargentin, which was plundered during the Seven Years' War and not resettled. It was located on Lake Malchin in Mecklenburg just north of today's Basedow. Wargentin is historically recorded in 1335 and 1491 as Warghentyn and in 1372 as Warkentyn (Low German=Zee to Warkentyn) (see Trautmann 1950, page 160). It is variously referred to as Wargutin (1215), Warkentyn, Warghentin, villa Warghentin (1220), 1229 Wargutin (1229). It refers to "Place of the Varguta" (Ort des Varguta, Vargęta). Some have suggested that it refers to the Varangians. It might also be taken from the Old High German "warga" which refers to place of the devils/wolves/enemies. Since it was on the borderlands between the salvic peoples and the Germanic expansion into the area, it would not be unusual to name a place after where the enemy/wolves reside. The disproportionate concentration of the surname today in the Detmold area (North Rhine-Westphalia) can be attributed to the settlement of predominantly Mennonite Russian-German emigrants who had emigrated from the Vistula delta to Russia at the end of the 18th century. Apparently, a bearer of the family name had joined a Mennonite community before the middle of the 17th century. Prior to that the name was absent from Mennonite church membership rolls. There were prior mentions of the name but only within a non-Mennonite context. The first mention of "Warkentin" is found in "Mecklenburgische Reimchronik" by Ernst von Kirchberg and was written down in the years 1378-1379. In it reference is made to a priest by the name of Johann von Warkentyn living in the year 1330 in Güstrow, with the story beginning on July 13, 1330 when he converts and baptises a young Jewish woman that very quickly results in a pogrom.