significance of zu- as part of surname
Nevertheless, it was mostly aristocrats and other land owners who acquired a surname consisting of von, zu or zur and a toponym. When families were raised to nobility later on, the prefix was added in front of their existing name whatever its source, e.g. von Goethe.article von was preserved as well; once hyphens came into common use in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was used to connect the von with the following part of the surname (e.g. Russian: ÑÐ¾Ð½-Ð²Ð¸Ð·Ð¸Ð½, von-Wiesen). However, since the twentieth century the particle has been written separately, as in the German origin.