Over the last few days I’ve been popping “Kerlen” into browsers and a myriad of Genealogy sites in the hope of finding more Kerlens, more information, anything! I started at the most logical place. The top of our known family tree. There’s not much around about Gerard Kerlen. It’s like he just appeared from nowhere and decided that Zutphen was the place he’d like to live and start off a family called Kerlen.
I’ve been casually researching the family name for a long time. Whilst randomly searching the internet for the name Kerlen I came across this little village/hamlet in France called Kerlen. You’ll notice from the screenshot that several other nearby places start with “Ker”. I am led to believe that this may mean “House”. I vaguely remember coming across something once that explained that Kerlen meant: House of Len.
There is a French connection to the Kerlen family. Apparently it is a French Hugenot name. An anecdotal tale from my Opa to my mother explains that Kerlen is a derivative of another similar French name. How true that is I don’t know.