Re: Possible Germanic Tagg connection

Tagg is also a Swedish "soldier name", i.e. a 1-syllable short name given by officers in the 17th century to Swedish army conscripts who had long names like Andersson, Eriksson or Engelbrektsson. There are a few Taggs in the Göteborg and Malmö phone books. Examples of other short "soldier names" are Kvick (=quick) and Lång (=tall). "Tagg" is Swedish for "thorn" and may possibly be related to the name Sharp.

The name Tagge exists in Hamburg. I don't know if this relates to British or to the Swedish name Tagg.

As the Swedes say, "ingen ros utan tagg" (= no rose without thorn[s]).

Philip Tagg
(Montréal)

P.S. I am the brother of Stephen Tagg (Scotland) who has contributed to the messages posted on this site. I will try tounearth the genealogy of our strain of Taggs and post it on my own website (www.ptagg.info) in the not too distant future.