Melander Family History

German: from a humanist translation of Schwarzmann ‘black man’ into a Greek compound derived from melas ‘black’ + aner ‘man’, ‘male’, genitive andros. Swedish: either the same as 1, or an ornamental name composed of the elements Mel-, an unexplained element of Swedish place names, + -ander, a popular learned surname suffix, taken from Greek andr- ‘man’.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press