-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.uscj.org/seabd/arlingaf/jnames.htm
>>>Tring to find out some about "ghettoes" and this is part of
that<<<
}}}>Begin
Ashkenazic Family Names: Origin & Development
by Isaac Goldberg presented to Sisterhood Meeting on 9/16/96
It is safe to say that throughout Jewish history, until the French
Revolution and the ensuing breakdown of the ghetto walls, most Jews
had no family name as we know the concept. The Mishnah and Talmud
sages were known by their "first name ben father's name". So in the
Middle Ages - Judah ben Samuel, ha-Hasid; Baruch ben Samuel , of
Mainz, etc. Ashkenaz is the name applied to the Jewish communities of
Germany, France and Bohemia. Ashkenazi Jewry also included the Jews
of Poland and Russia, most of whom immigrated from Germany. The most
outstanding mark of Ashkenazi Jewry was what is known today as
Yiddish, a language deriving mostly from Middle High German, and
still spoken by some Ashkenazi Jews.
In German Ashkenazi documents, few family names occur. In Hebrew
official documents (such as a 'get' -- divorce); only names used by
Jews among Jews were admissible, i.e. making the "get" "kosher". When
persons having the same Hebrew names ( a strong possibility!) were
involved in the divorce, family names supplemented the Hebrew names.
Accordingly, family names in North European documents are sporadic
before the second half of the 18th c
entury.
With the new order, governments (of duchies, petty kingdoms and other political
entities) were faced with the problem - financial as well as administrative - of
adding these new "citizens" to local tax rolls. This created
a serious name problem. For example, how to handle several households where the heads
had the same name - Isaac ben Jacob.
It is an irony of Jewish history that Austrian Emperor Joseph II, the son of the arch
Anti- Semite Maria Theresa, a bigoted and fanatic ruler who couldn't stand Jews, was a
very tolerant and liberal ruler. He permitted Je
ws to study handicrafts, to engage in agriculture and wholesale commerce, and admitted
them into the universities and the army. In 1787, he issued an edict ordering the Jews
of Galicia and Bukovina to adopt permanent fami
ly names, the first such law in Europe. Prussia occupied Warsaw from 1794-1806 and
imposed German-sounding names on its Polish Jews. Laws ordering Jews to assume fixed
family names were passed also in Frankfurt, Baden, We
stphalia and others. In 1808, Napoleon decreed a similar requirement for all Jews in
his empire. In the Russian Empire, the Czar Alexander initiated this policy in 1804,
finalizing it in 1845. These new regulations were i
ntended to expedite the levying of taxes and the conscription of Jewish soldiers.
For the government officials in charge, the granting and registering of names proved a
new way of extorting money from Jews. Fine-sounding names derived from flowers and
gems (Rosenthal, (valley of roses), Lilienthal (val
e of lilies), Edelstein (beautiful stone), Diamant (Diamond), Saphir (Sapphire) came
at a high price. Those who could not afford to pay were stuck with names like Schmalz
(grease), Singmirwas (sing me something),Eselkopf
(donkey's head) etc. The policy was to "Germanize" the names.
Where Jews could manage by some device or other to escape the interference of the
authorities and choose their own names, they resorted to several methods.
1. Caste or Function
A popular procedure was to draw on their religious caste or function, i.e. Kohen and
its various forms such as:
Cohen
Katz (from kohen tzedek)
Kaplan
Kagan
Kahan
Kahn
Kohnstamm
A popular belief concerned Kohanim and curly-haired people as being quick tempered,
giving rise to names such as:
Kraushaar (German for curly hair)
Duchan
Duchen
Duchin (from "dukhening" the Yiddish for the Kohanim ritual blessing)
Levi and its various forms:
Levy
Levin
Levine
Levinsky
Levitansky
Levitsky
Levinson
Levitt
Segal (an abbreviation for Segan Levi, "assistant of the Levites")
Variations of Segal are:
Zoegell
Chagall
Segalowitch
2. Profession
Occupations were an important source for forming new family names:
Cantor, Kantor, and Singer
Fleischer & Fleischmann (butcher)
Beck, Becker, Backer, Baker (baker) -- Pekarsky in Russian is from pekar = baker
Breuer (brewer)
Weber (weaver)
Kramer (merchant)
Wechsler (money changer)
Goldschmidt (goldsmith)
Brenner (distiller)
Gerber (tanner)
Shub, from Shohet-u-Bodek (slaughterer & inspector/tester)
Schechter (ritual slaughterer)
Resnick (Slavic for slaughterer)
Lehrer (teacher)
Schneider for tailor
Saltzmann and Saltman (Spicehandler)
Farber (painter)
Sandler & Schuster (shoemaker)
Fiedler (fiddler), Grajek in Polish, Geiger in German
Gottesdiener (God's server), Hegedus in Hungarian
Wassermann, Watterman (waterman)
3. Patronymics & Matronymics
The simplest way of choosing a family name was to create a patronym by adding the
suffix -sohn in German, -vitch in Russian. Also -ov, -off, -eff, and -kin to denote
"descendant of".
>From the father:
Isaac -- Isaacs, Isaacson, Itzik, Eisen
Jacob -- Jacobs, Jacobsen, Jacobson, Jacobowitz
Abraham -- Abrams, Abramson
Mendel -- Mendelson
David -- Davidson
>From the mother
Sarah -- Sarasohn, Sarlin, Sarkin
Greta -- Gretz, Graetz
Rivka (Rebecca) -- Rivkin
Batya -- Baskin, Basin
Hora (Czech for mountain) -- Horovitz
Man, Manis, Manes, Mannes -- Manischewitz
Margaret -- Margaretten
Sometimes a man would forsake both his parents to go with his wife:
Dienesman ("husband of Dinah")
Hodesmann ("husband of Hadassah")
Perlman ("Husband of Perl")
4. Place of Origin
Many Jews took their family names from their place of origin, so we find innumerable
provinces, cities, villages all over Germany, Austria, western Russia, Hungary and
other countries among Jewish surnames :
Auerbach
Bamberger, Baumberger
Brody
Dreyfuss (Alsatian corruption of Treves)
Dresner (Dresden)
Spiro (Speyer from Speyer, whence also Shapiro)
Lasker
Horowitz (Slavic: Gurovitz)
Frankfurter
Wiener (from Vienna)
Landau from London
Pinsky, Pinsker (from Pinsk)
Frank (from Franconia) -- some say it's like Frankel, a sobriquet for Ephraim
Weil
Schwab from Swabia
Pollack from Poland
Littauer from Lithuania
Schlesinger from Silesia
It is not always easy to determine whether a particular name stems from a town or not.
Thus, Steinberg, Goldberg, Greenberg, and Rosenberg happen to be names of real places,
but Levinstein and Aronthal are not. Nor need t
he possession of a place name mean that the bearer actually came from there. The
family name Berlin has, in most cases, nothing to do with the German city. It is a
patronymic of Ber or Berl. Berlin simply means "the son o
f Berl". And the family name London is really the Hebrew word "lamden" (scholar) by
which the bearer was known in the Jewish community. But the naming authority confused
London with Lamden.
An outgrowth of place names were names based on house-signs. Since in many towns,
streets were not named and not numbered, houses bore signs based either on the owner's
first name:
Wolf
Lion, Lyon, Leon
fruits (apple, Apfel)
flower (Blum, Bloom, Blumenfeld)
mirror (Spiegel)
eagle (Adler)
The most prominent, of course, was Rothschild (red shield).
5. Acronyms from Hebrew letters
Examples:
Schach, from Shabbetia Kohan
Bach, from Beth Chadash (a book by Joel Sirkes)
Malbim, from Meir Leib ben Jehiel Michel (Rabbi & Bible commentator)
Brann, from Ben Rabbi Nahman
Braff , from Ben Rabbi Feivel
Bash and Basch, from Ben Shimshon
Brasch, from Ben Rav Shimshon
Metz and Matz, from Moreh (Moshe) Tsedek (teacher of righteousness)
Schalit and Shalit, from Sheyihye le-orekh yamim tovim (May he live long and good
times)
Wallach, from Veahavta le-reyakha kamocha (love your neighbor as yourself)
6. Vernacular
Sometimes the Hebrew first name was translated into the vernacular: The idea of
"peace" from Solomon and Shalom was carried over into the name Fried and Friedman; so
you'd get:
Shalom - Friedman
Gedaliah - Grossman
Itzik - Lachman
Tuviah - Goodman
Shimshon - Starkman (strength)
Meir - Lichtman (light)
Other names of interest are:
Gross or Grois - big; Grosz or Nagy (Hungarian); Duzy (Polish)
Gold and its derivatives - Zlato (Rus/Polish); Aranyi (Hungarian)
Einstein - patronymic of Ein (Hayyim)
Einhorn - unicorn (German)
Rubin & its derivatives - ruby (stone of tribe Reuben)
Pomerantz - orange /bitter orange (Russian & Polish)
Margolis (Margalit) - Pearl
Frank or Frankel - sobriquet for Ephraim
Okin or Okun - (Russian for perch)
The name Alter and Altman (old man) comes from a secondary name given often to a child
born posthumously or born after a sibling dies, to fool the evil eye.
In some cases, names were simply invented out of whole cloth; in others they were
taken from characters in the popular literature of the day (Sternberg, Morgenthau). In
many communities in Hungary, the Jews were divided i
nto four groups, and each group was assigned the name Weiss (white), Schwartz (black),
Gross (big), and Klein (small) respectively.
Even the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service had a hand in changing
and Americanizing these European surnames. Many Cohens are not really Cohanim. If the
original name sounded too foreign or too difficult
to pronounce or write, the clerk at Ellis Island wrote down "Cohen" if the name began
with a "K" sound. So also for Levi/Levy for difficult names that began with an "L." In
many cases, where the original name was many sy
llables, the clerk just wrote down the first syllable of the name and left it
truncated.
Hollywood too had its negative influence on Jewish names. Many performers changed
their names to attract a larger audience and to avoid discrimination against their
Jewishness. Performers transformed themselves from Milto
n Berlinger to Milton Berle, Fanny Borach to Fanny Brice, Isser Danielovitch to Kirk
Douglas, Julius Garfinkle to John Garfield, Emanuel Goldberg to Edward G. Robinson,
Joseph Levitch to Jerry Lewis, Judith Tuvim to Judy
Holliday, Asa Yoelson to Al Jolson, Theodosia Goodman to Theda Bara, Sonia Kalish to
Sophie Tucker, Isidor Iskowitch to Eddie Cantor, Irving Lahrheim to Bert Lahr, Israel
Baline to Irving Berlin.
7. Israel Family Names
After discussing Diaspora family names, let's turn to the Holy Land
and explore the make- up of common Israeli names. Many Diaspora names
underwent some cosmetic changes, either by Hebraicisation i.e.
translating, or shortening, i.e. dropping the Diaspora suffix such as
"vich," "witz," etc. The most prominent and familiar personage is of
course David Ben- Gurion, whos e original name was Green. He used the
consonants "g," "r," and "n" and chose the name of an ancient
Palestinian leader, Gurion. The second Israeli prime minister, Isaac
Ben-Zevi, was originally Isaac Shimshelewitz, son of Zevi
Shimshelewitz. He changed to Isaac Ben-Zevi, using his father's
forename. Moshe Chertok, first Minister of Foreign Affairs, used the
consonants of his surname and became Moshe Sharett (server). A former
Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, was born Levi Shkolnik. A well-known
historian Michael Friedman became Michael Ish-Shalom (Man of Peace).
The name Goldberg has many permutations: Har-Zahav, Harpaz, Ophir,
Pazy, Zahavy. Shimon Peres was originally Shimon Persky. Morgenstern
became Shahar (dawn) or Ben-Shahar, Gottesman became Yedidyah (God's
friend or man of God). So Jewish family names are still evolving and
adapting to fit the times. But with the state of Israel and a more
civilized world, Jewish names are changing naturally, for meaningful
reasons, not from external forces or internal fears, not bent or
forced into strange shapes and meanings.
Copyright � 1996 Arlington-Fairfax Jewish Congregation. All rights
reserved.
http://www.uscj.org/seabd/arlingaf
End<{{{
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