Ebernhahn is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
First unequivocally mentioned in 1324 as Evernhan, Ebernhahn is counted among the newer Westerwald villages, and through the Middle Ages, its name hardly cropped up at all. After the devastating effects of the Thirty Years‘ War (1618–48), it counted, together with nearby Siershahn, only 42 inhabitants.
Ebernhahn’s name comes from the Old High German word hag (“enclosure”), making the name’s meaning, roughly, “belonging to the boar’s enclosure”; Eber is German for “boar”.
Ebernhahn was at first under the governance of the Electorate of Trier, later passing to the Duchy of Nassau and later still, in 1866, to Prussia. Since 1971 it has belonged to what was then the newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Wirges, a kind of collective municipality, and since 1974 it has been part of the Westerwaldkreis whose district seat is in Montabaur.
In the mid 19th century,…