Jacob is way ahead of me on this one! I had only posted my request to
GerSIG, but I'll repeat it here:

The subject line refers, not to hilarious or ghastly names, but
literally to those that occur only once: that is, in exactly one
family. In my research I've encountered quite a few of these, among them:

ARONADE/ARNADE
UCKO or UCKU
LOEBINGER
TROPLOWITZ
LAQUER or LAQUEUR
PRINGSHEIM
MUEHSAM

...all >from Silesia, and all fairly large families.

[Added to the Silesian list already: ALGAZE, BIELSCHOWSKY, and LICHTWITZ]

Any such assertion has to be qualified by "as far as I know" or similar
disclaimers, because a counterexample could be lurking anywhere. For
our purposes the phrase "among Jews" would also be an appropriate
qualifier. One could further limit the assertion of uniqueness to a
region and time period, for example, the DRESDNER family of Upper
Silesia in the 19thC. But each of those listed above belongs to just
one Jewish family, as far as I know.

Why does any of this matter? Convenience, mostly. If someone has
substantially researched a name and the family it represents, including
database searches and even Googling, and the surname seems to be unique,
its inclusion on a list of such names might be of great use to others,
and could help the original researcher too, because the prospect of a
"sure thing" might move otherwise shy correspondents to make contact.

If you'd like, send me the cases you know of, preferably with some
indication of the region where the name was first recorded (as far as
you know). I'd be glad to collate a list and post it for discussion.
[end of copied posting]

Response to this query has been good so far. All submissions and
suggestions welcome!

Roger Lustig Princeton, NJ

Abuwasta Abuwasta wrote: