This is the grave marker for my paternal grandparents Leon and Sophia (Pawlak) Kleylein. It's located in Dade Memorial Park in Florida. It's odd to see my own last name on a gravesite, the only other place I've ever really seen it was in a cemetery in Germany when we visited the area from which all Kleyleins sprang forth (northeast Bavaria).
For instance, below, there's 5 of them just on this one memorial to the fallen from World War I and II that's located in the small town of Unterrodach, Germany. It's a strange surname, can't really be translated to anything and you might think, oh, it's German, it should probably be "Kleilein" and sometimes it is, but more often it's "Kleylein", even on really old records. Maybe one day we'll figure it out!
One theory is that 'Kleylein' is a VERY old name whose spelling pre-dates German language rules that have been in place for a long, long time. I've had German colleagues argue with me that Kleylein is not a German name at all since it doesn't 'follow the rules'. Yeah, well, that's just how we roll.
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