 | This article includes a list ofgeneral references, butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations. Please help toimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(July 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Jewish surnames arefamily names used byJews and those of Jewish origin. Jewish surnames are thought to be of comparatively recent origin;[1]: 190 the first known Jewish family names date to theMiddle Ages, in the 10th and 11th centuries.[2]
Jews have some of the largest varieties of surnames among any ethnic group, owing to the geographically diverseJewish diaspora, as well ascultural assimilation and the recent trend towardHebraization of surnames. Some traditional surnames relate to Jewish history or roles within the religion, such asCohen ("priest"),Levi ("Levi"),Shulman ("synagogue-man"),Sofer ("scribe"), orKantor/Cantor ("cantor"), while many others relate to a secular occupation or place names. The majority of Jewish surnames used today developed in the past three hundred years.[3][4]
Historically, Jews usedHebrewpatronymic names. In the Jewish patronymic system the first name is followed byben-, bar- orbat- ("son of" inHebrew, "son of" inAramaic and "daughter of," respectively), and then the father's name.
Permanent family surnames only gained popularity amongSephardic Jews inIberia and elsewhere as early as the 10th or 11th century and did not spread widely to theAshkenazic Jews of Germany or Eastern Europe until the 18th and 19th centuries, where the adoption of surnames was imposed in exchange forJewish emancipation. European nations gradually undertook legal endeavors with the aim of enforcing permanent surnames in the Jewish populations. Part of theAlhambra Decree of 1492 contained a provision mandating fixed legal surnames for Sephardic Jews, but it was not until the 18th century that the rest of Europe followed suit. TheKingdom of Prussia began sequentially requiring Jews in its eastern provinces to adopt surnames in the 1790s in an edict affirmed byNapoleon Bonaparte following his invasion of Prussia in 1812. In 1787,Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II promulgated an edict requiring all Jews inAustria to acquire surnames. TheRussian Empire mandated the assigning of surnames to Jews by their local community leaders in 1804.France adopted a similar policy in 1808. By the middle of the 19th century, most European Jews had acquired surnames under government pressure.[5]:9-10
Surnames were derived from a variety of sources, such as the personal names of ancestors, place names, and occupations. In the 18th century, a custom developed amongst the Eastern European Jews of theAustro-Hungarian andRussian Empires where surnames began being passed from mother to son as opposed from father to son, but the trend seems to have died out by the early 20th century.
An exception was members of the Cohanim (priestly caste) andLevites (descendants of Levi) who performed certain religious duties, who had always appended the surnames Cohen and Levi respectively (modern spelling in English may vary), which were usually preceded byha- meaning "the" in Hebrew. These names are seen in many various forms today, all coming from this root. For example, the name Levine in English-speaking countries, the name Löw in Germanic countries and the names Levi, Lévai, or Lévay in Hungary, Europe, or America. Although Ashkenazi Jews now use European or modern-Hebrew surnames for everyday life, the Hebrew patronymic form (ben- orbas-/bat- with the father's name) is still used in Jewish religious and cultural life. It is used in thesynagogue and in documents inJewish law, such as theketubah (marriage contract).
Surnames were not unknown among the Jews of the Middle Ages, and as Jews began to mingle more with their fellow citizens, the practice of using or adopting civic surnames in addition to the "sacred" name, used only in religious connections, grew commensurately. Among theSephardim, this practice was common long before theexile from Spain, and probably became still more common as a result of the example of thePortuguese conversos, who upon adopting Christianity accepted in most cases the family names of their godfathers, or their pre-expulsion Sephardic transliterated names. Among theAshkenazim, whose isolation from the mainstream majority population in the lands where they lived was more complete, the use of surnames only started to become common in most places in the eighteenth century.
On the other hand, the use of surnames became common very early among the Arabic-speaking Jews, who carried the custom into theIberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). AmongSephardi Jews are found such names asAbeldano, corresponding toIbn el-Danan;Abencabre, corresponding toIbn Zabara; Tongay is another Sephardi Jewish last name and is derived from the root word Torah (תּוֹרָה) in Hebrew;Avinbruch orAuerbach corresponding toIbn Baruch; and Beizaee, corresponding toIza (Hebrew root for "God is perfection").[6]
Hagen corresponds toHassan orHazan; and the like. Biblical names often take curious forms in the Iberian records,Isaac appearing asAcaz,Cohen asCoffen or Coffe,Yom-Ṭob asBondia,Ẓemaḥ asCrescas and/orCresquez,Pilpel asPimentel and/orPimental.
Arias, a patronymic surname, became common throughout the Iberian peninsula. Among the Jews of Spain and Portugal, it had the hidden meaning "the lion of Israel is high above". A well-known Arias was the humanist and HebraistBenito Arias Montano.
Sephardic Jews who settled inWallachia, Romania, coming fromTrani, Italy, in the 1700s began to adoptMitrani as their surname with a reference to their city.[7]
TheḤen family appears to have adopted a translation of the name of their home village, Gracia, nearBarcelona.[8] Indeed, among the Sephardi the tendency to adopt family names from localities is largely developed; hence were derived such names asEspinosa,Gerondi,Cavalleria,De La Torre,del Monte,Lousada, andVilla Real. The nameSasportas deserves special attention, as it is really theBalearic dialectal form ofLa Porta.
Many families, especially amongNew Christians (Jewish converts to Catholicism) andCrypto-Jews, but not restricted to them, took Spanish and Portuguese family names, sometimes using translations (such as Vidal or de Vidas forHayyim, Lobos forZev, de Paz forShalom, and de la Cruz or Espírito Santo forRuah); phonetic similarities according to akinnui-like system, sometimes choosing between already existing ones (such as Pizarro/Pissarro, Mendes, Fonseca, Calle, Fernandes or Rodrígues); evengiven names (for example, de Jesus or de Miguel).Julio Caro Baroja, supportingJosé Leite de Vasconcelos' thesis in his "Anthroponymy Portuguesa, 4" argues, for example, that the surnames related tocalle (English: "street"), that would be the equivalent in something like a ghetto, are ofJewish origin. This is the case with Alonso Calle, treasurer on the first voyage ofChristopher Columbus to the Americas, who was one of the settlers of Sephardic origin who comprised the crew.
Some Sephardic or Hidden/Undeclared Jews for fear of persecution or worse felt compelled to anglicize their names (For example, the original, Italianate Principe thus became Prins in early Amsterdam, and Prince in England or early America later on). Anglicized Sephardic families were also known to have intermixed with similar Christian surname communities and family groupings, often later converting.
TheCuriel family is part of these New Christian families that emerge around the time due to persecution. Members adopted the Portuguese last name of Nunes da Costa and the Curiel family wereennobled byJoão IV of Portugal June 14, 1641.[9][10]
Jews have historically usedHebrew patronymic names. While permanent family surnames started appearing amongSephardic Jews inIberia and elsewhere as early as the 10th or 11th century, they did not spread widely to theAshkenazic Jews ofGermany orEastern Europe until later. However, Non-Ashkenazi Jews who had immigrated to what was consideredAshkenaz (such as Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition) would often keep their surnames and/or Ashkenazize them (e.g., "Melamad" was kept; "Leoni" would be Ashkenazized to "Leib"), and some of the already-settled Jews in communities in large cities (such asPrague orFrankfurt am Main) began to adopt various surnames.
Matronymic surnames, derived from the name of thematriarch of the family were adopted by many households,[11] seecategory:Jewish matronymic surnames.
Other surnames came from the man's trade such as Metzger (butcher) or Becker (baker), see#Occupational names and nicknames. A few are derived from personal attributes, such asJoffe (beautiful), or special events in the family history. The majority of Middle Age surname adoption came from place names, see#Toponymic surnames, (for exampleShapiro, from Shpira,Speyer, a Rhenanian city known for its famous Jewish community in the 11th century), often a town name, typically the birthplace of the founder of a rabbinical or other dynasty. These names would permutate to various forms as families moved, such as the original Welsch becoming Wallach, Wlock, or Block. Since these surnames did not have the official status that modern ones do, often the old surname would be dropped and a new one adopted after the family moved their household.[12][13]
Many surnames in the Netherlands derived from the German versions. For example,Waal derived fromWahl and Voorzanger (Chazan) derived from Vorsänger.
The process of assigning permanent surnames to Jewish families (most of which are still used to this day) began in Austria. On July 23, 1787, five years after theEdict of Tolerance, theHoly Roman EmperorJoseph II issued a decree calledDas Patent über die Judennamen which compelled the Jews to adopt German surnames.[14][15][16] Prussia did so soon after, beginning withSilesia: the city ofBreslau in 1790, the Breslau administrative region in 1791, theLiegnitz region in 1794. In 1812, whenNapoleon had occupied much of Prussia, surname adoption was mandated for the unoccupied parts; and Jews in the rest of Prussia adopted surnames in 1845.[12][17]
Napoleon also, in a decree of July 20, 1808, insisted upon the Jews adopting fixed names.[18] His decree covered all lands west of the Rhine; and many other parts of Germany required surname-adoption within a few years. The city ofHamburg was the last German state to complete the process, in 1849.[19]
At the end of the 18th century after thePartition of Poland and later after theCongress of Vienna theRussian Empire acquired a large number of Jews who did not use surnames. They, too, were required to adopt surnames during the 19th century.
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(June 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Manyimmigrants tomodern Israel change their names to Hebrew names, to erase remnants of exiled life still surviving in family names from other languages. This phenomenon is especially common amongAshkenazic Jewish immigrants to Israel, because most of their surnames were taken recently, and many were imposed by authorities in Europe as a replacement for the traditional Hebrew patronymic form.
A popular form to create a new family name using Jewish patronymics sometimes related to poetic Zionist themes, such asben Ami ("son of my people"), orben Artzi ("son of my country"), and sometimes related to the Israeli landscape, such asbar Ilan ("son of the trees"). Others have created Hebrew names based onphonetic similarity with their original family name:Golda Meyersohn becameGolda Meir. Another famous person who used a false patronymic was the firstIsraeli Prime Minister,David Ben-Gurion, whose original family name was Grün,"green" in German, but adopted the name "Ben-Gurion" ("son of thelion cub"), not "Ben-Avigdor" (his father's name).
Most of theJews in Iran had no permanent surnames beforeReza Shah. After surnames became mandatory, many Persian Jews employed job related names as their surnames. Many Jews worked in non-Muslim professions like goldsmith, silversmith, dealers of coins, money changing and seller of spirits. Others engaged in medicine, silk manufacturing and weaving, locksmith, tailors, shoe makers, merchants of second hand items.[20] Many other Jews were engaged in jewelry trading, opium and wine manufacturing, musicians, dancers, scavengers, peddlers and other professions that were generally deemed non-respectful.[21]
Many Jews adopted these professions as their surnames, such as Barzegar (the ones in Meybod, Yazd, meaning farmer), Abrishami (silk maker), Almasi (diamond maker), Boloorian (crystal maker), Dehghan (wealthy farmer), Fallah (farmer), Zarrinkoob, Javaherian, Gohari (gold seller), Noghrehforosh (silversmith), Mesforosh (coppersmith), Sarraf, Sarrafan, Sarraf Nezhad, Banki (money changer), Zargar, Zarshenas, Javaheri, Javaherian (goldsmith), Hakakian or Hakkakian (connected with raw material, finished product or implements associated with that trade) for example Roya Hakakian. Jews in Iran also employed the son of or daughter of patronymics, using Persian suffixes such as-pour (son of),-zadeh (born of),-nezhad (from the race of) and-ian (from the group of). Some examples of these names include Davoud pour (son of David), Davoud nezhad (from the seed of David), Davoud zadeh (born of David), Rabbi pour (son of a rabbi), Rabbi zadeh (born of a rabbi), Yaghoub pour (son of Jacob) and Jafar nezhad (from the race of Japhet).Levite andKohanim surnames became Lavi, Lavaee, Lavi Zadeh, Lavaeeian, Kohan, Kohan pour (son of a Kohen), etc.
Many Persian last names consisted of three parts in order to distinguish from other families with similar last names. Some Persian Jewish families that had similar surnames to their Muslim neighbors added a second surname at the end of their last names. As an example Jafar nezhad Levian (From the race of Japhet and from the Tribe ofLevite). The purpose of Levian at the end is to distinguish from Muslim Jafar nezhad (From the race of Japhet).
Many Jews employed the Turkish suffix-chi (meaning "merchant of") to denote their profession. Examples of such include Abrishamchi (silk merchant), Saatchi (watch seller), Talachi (gold seller), Noghrechi (silver seller), Arakchi (merchant of alcoholic drinks), Meschi (copper merchant), Aeenechi (merchant of mirrors), etc.[22]
Many modern Jewish surnames aretoponymic surnames, names derived from place names. There are general names likeDeutsch,Frank,Franco,Frankel, and more localized ones from almost every European country.
The Netherlands has contributedLeuwarden,Neumegen,Limburg,van Thal, and various othervans, asvan Ryn (Rhine), etc.
Germany has contributed the largest number. Some refer to well-known cities asSpeyer (in the Middle Ages Spira) (hence Shapira orShapiro),Posen (hencePosner andPosener, as well asPozner),Berlin (henceBerliner andBerlinsky),Breslau (anglicised to "Bresslaw"),Bingen,Cassel (cf.David Cassel),Treves (whence, according to some authorities, originated the very popularAlsatian name ofDreyfus),Dresden,Fulda (henceFoulde), andOppenheim; others, to less familiar towns, likeAuerbach,Bischoffsheim,Utting am Ammersee (hence Utting),Hildesheim (Hildesheimer),Landshuth,Sulzberg. House signs such as those in theFrankfurter Judengasse gave rise to the names of some of the best known of Jewish families:Rothschild ("redshield"),Schwarzschild ("black shield"),Adler ("eagle"),Ganz orGans ("goose"),Strauß ("ostrich"), andOchs ("ox").[23] Some names may seem to be derived artificially, but can also refer to towns, e.g.,Birnbaum (translated into "Peartree"),Rosenberg,Kornberg,Sommerfeld,Grünberg (henceGreenberg),Goldberg, andRubinstein/Rubenstein.
The EnglishCrawcour (cf.Siegfried Kracauer) comes fromCracow, whilevan Praag(h) is the name of aPrague family that settled in the Netherlands before going over to England. The nameGordon may in some cases be derived from the RussianGrodno[citation needed] but is also said to have been adopted by Jews in the Russian Empire in honor ofLord George Gordon (1751–1793), a Scottish nobleman who converted to Judaism in 1787 in Birmingham.
From Poland have come names such asPolano,Pollock,Polack,Polak,Pollak,Poole,Pool, andPolk. The namesAltschul orAltschuler are derived from theAltschul ("old school/synagogue") of Prague.
Sephardic surnames, as already mentioned, are almost invariably local, asAlmanzi, Arwa and Aruesti (fromHervas[24]), Bejarano (fromBejar),Castro,Carvajal,Espinosa/Spinoza,Silva,Leon,Navarro,Robles,Sevilla (Spanish), andAlmeida,Carvallo,Lisbona,Miranda,Paiva,Pimentel,Porto,Pieba andVerdugo (Portuguese). Many Italian names are also of this class, asAlatino, Di Cori (fromCori),Genovese (fromGenoa),Meldola,Montefiore,Mortara,Pisa,Rizzolo,Romanelli (with its variantsRomanin,Romain,Romayne, andRomanel),Sonnino, Vitalis (fromJaim orChaim and its variants Vidal, Vidale and Vidas); Verdugo and its variants Berdugo, Bardogo,Paradiso an anagram for the word diaspora (dispersion).
Even in the East there are names of these last two classes,Barron (fromBarOn),Galante,Veneziani, though there are a few Arabic names likeAlfandari and Ḥaggis; Greek, asGalipapa andPappo; and a few Turkish, asJamila,Gungur, Bilbil, andSabad.[25] Going still farther east, the curious custom which prevails among theBene Israel may be mentioned of changing Biblical names to similarHindu names with the addition of-jee, thusBenjamin intoBenmajee,Abraham intoAbrajee,David intoDawoodjee,Jacob intoAkkoobjee.
Another frequent source for Jewish and German-Jewish surnames is the names of trades and occupations; such names asKaufmann andMarchant ("merchant") became prominent. Others of the same kind are: Bialasik,Banks, Brauer, Breyer, and Brower ("brewer");Spielmann ("musician");Gerber ("tanner"); Goldschmit (Goldsmith); Silverschmit (Silversmith);Steinschneider ("stonecutter");Graveur ("engraver");Shoemark orSchumacher ("shoemaker");Schuster ("cobbler");Schneider,Schneiders, andSnyders ("tailor"; in Hebrewחייט,Chait/Khait (and at timesHyatt[citation needed]));Wechsler ("money-changer");Zimmermann ("Carpenter"). Related, and likewise generically German, names are derivedmetonymically for a common object or tool of a profession: e.g., Hammer for a blacksmith, Feder ("quill") for a scribe, and Lein ("linen") for a dealer in cloth;Balsam a dealer in Balsam.
There are other occupational names that are more distinctively related to Jewish culture and religious roles: Dayan (Jewish religious judge in a Beth din); Parnass, Derus, Gabbay, Singer,Cantor,Voorsanger,Chazan,Cantarini, from the synagogue officials who were so called;Shochet,Schaechter,Schechter, from the ritualslaughterer (also Schub or Shub: Hebrew acronym forshochet u-bodek, ritual slaughterer and kosher meat inspector);Shadkun, a marriage-broker;Rabe,Rabinowitz,Rabinovich,Rabinowicz, andRabbinovitz,rabbis (occasionally Anglicized toRobinson orRobbins);Behar/Bahar, abbreviation of the Hebrew honorific title "ben kavod rabbi," which signifies "son of the honorable rabbi",[24]Benmohel (one variant of which isMahler), son of one who performedcircumcision, the sacred rite of Abraham. A number of Arabic names are of similar origin:Al-Fakhkhar, a potter;Mocatta, a mason or possibly a soldier (Al-Muḳatil).[26]
История большинства еврейских фамилий укладывается в три столетия ... связанные с религией: Шульман – служитель в синагоге; Рабинович – раввин; Сойфер – писатель священных текстов. Особой популярностью пользовались два титула: Коэн – священный жрец и Леви – помощник священника.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906)."Names (Personal)".The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.