Bill Kelso
Jewish Surnames
I.Some of the Most Common Jewish Surnames in America
Lewis
Kaplan
Goldberg
Katz
Goldstein
Cohen
Schapiro
Epstein
Rosenberg
Friedman
Weinstein
Schneider
Feldman
Kagan
Kohn
Gordon
Bernstein
Schwartz
Finkelstein
II. The Origins of Naming. Where did they get their surnames.
For centuries Jewish individuals, as well as most people in the West and in the Bible, had only single names, even though a given name might be followed by a word indicating you were the son of a certain individual. Where and when Jewish individuals began to actually adopt surnames depended on their particular historical circumstance.
As we shall see the Jewish community eventually split into three separate communities, all of which adopted differing naming procedures.
For instance in the Middle Ages many Jewish individuals migrated from the Middle East and established new homes western Europe. However, given the religious intensity of the crusades, the countries of Spain and England eventually ended up expelling all of their Jewish residents in the 13thcentury. In their search for a new homeland most Jewish individuals migrated from western Europe to either northern Europe, or southern Europe.
Those whose went to northern Europe were called Ashkenazi Jews and primarily ended up in Poland. However, when Poland was conquered by Russia and Germany, the Ashkenazi population was split in two with Jewish residents living either in German lands, or the Slavic territories of Poland and Russia.
In contrast those Jewish individuals who went south from Spain created what were called Sephardic communities while those who remained in the Middle East were called Mizrahi communities.
III. The Origins of Names. How Surnames vary by Location
When Jewish individuals acquired surnames varied depending on whether they were in Ashkenazi, Sephardic or Mizrahi communities.
For instance, Arabic speaking Jews in the Middle East and Sephardic Jews from Spain acquired surnames fairly early on in the Middle Ages such as the 10th and 11th centuries.
However, the Ashkenazi did not get their surnames until the end of the 18th and the start of the 19thcentury. It was only when the emperor of Austria and Napoleon decreed that Jews must adopt definitive family names that German Jews got surnames. Likewise in Russia the Czar took a similar line and ordered all Russian Jews to adopt a last name.
IV. Origins of Names Their Derivation.
A. Unique Jewish Names
1)Biblical Names
Because of their unique history many Jewish people have chosen biblical names for their last name. In some cases, there may be an ancestral link between an ancient Jewish institution or tribe, and a modern day Jewish family which is expressed in their family surname.
Names have always played an important role in Jewish history. For example, if something dramatically happens to an individual in Jewish biblical history, he or she gets a new name. Below are the two most famous examples of this process.
1 From Abram to Abraham
The first example of the bible conferring a new name is the example of Abram and Abraham, the father of Judaism. Abraham’s original name was Abram but God changed his name once he accepted a new special relationship between his people and God.
2. From Jacob to Israel
The second most famous example of a new name is when Jacob’s name becomes Israel. But who is Jacob? Jacob and his twin brother Esau were the grandchildren of Abraham and the sons of Isaac the founders of the new religion of Judaism.
One day Jacob after leaving home is attacked by someone whom he ends up wresting with, an individual that appears to be God.
In ancient Israel during the Bronze Age a common name for God was the word El. After the above wrestling match, Jacob, like his grandfather, gets a new name which is the word Israel, which literally means one who has wrestled with God. If you look at the letters in the name, the relationship becomes readily apparent. The first letters of the surname Israel or “Israe” mean you are wrestling with someone while the last two letters of the name indicate the name of your opponent. In this case that refers to El which as mentioned above is common Middle Eastern name for God.
But you might ask why was Jacob wrestling with God in the first place? It turns out that Jacob had many ethical issues and was more than willing to deceive others to get his way. The most notable example is that Jacob deceives his father and gets his blessing as the first born son, a high honor in the ancient middle east. In the process he cheats his brother Esau of a birthright that is really his. God is perhaps wrestling with Jacob because Jacob is not living up to the norms of his religion.
The Popularity of the Name El for God in the Middle East
Besides the Jewish community using El as the name for God, the Arabs also used El in their description for God. But the Arabs insisted on putting the definite article “the” in front of the world God which in Arabic is “ai” which results in God’s name becoming Allah.
3. Israel
While the popularity of the God named El was evident in the ancient past, why is it still in common use today. For instance, why did the Jewish community, after World War II, decide to name their country after Jacob’s new identity of Israel. The answer is simple. It turns out that Jacob will have 12 sons who will go on to populate the land of Israel as twelve separate tribes. In this sense he is literally the father of the Jewish people.
But even more significantly the name Israel is also a metaphor for the dilemma facing every religious Jewish person. One the one hand the Jewish people believe that God is a powerful and just God who is looking after the well-being of the Jewish people. On the other hand, in real life the Jewish people are constantly being attacked and enslaved by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and eventually by the Romans. In trying to reconcile the promise of God and the reality of their actual lives, the Jewish people have to wrestle with God, hence the name Israel.
After WWII, the newly created Jewish nation faced the same dilemma confronting their relatives in the ancient Middle East as they had to reconcile their belief in a just god with the German holocaust. As was the situation in the past, the Jewish people had to wrestled with the conflict between their beliefs and the brutality and violence that characterized the modern world. Their newly name country off Israel symbolized that dilemma,
Names that Reflect Religious Tribes or Positions in ancient Israel.
5. Levy
This is another important biblical name as it indicates that your family is descendent from the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Why is the tribe of Levi given such prominence? The answer is that Levi is the tribe of Moses and his brother Aaron and the members of the Levi tribe were instrumental in establishing and running the Jewish temple. Among other activities, this tribe guarded the temple and produced the priests or Cohens to run the temple.
Variation of the above name include Levi. Lewi, Levin. Levine. The maker of Levi jeans belonged to this priestly tribe of Israel.
6. Cohen.
This name meant you were a descendent from Aaron, the brother of Moses and the high Priest who presided over the Jewish Temple. Today individuals with this name often enjoy distinctions today such as giving the priestly blessing over the torah during religious services.
Variation of Cohen today are Kohn, Kahn, Kahane, Kagan, Kogan. Since there is no h sound in Russia it has been replaced with a g in the above variants of Cohen such as Kogan or Kagan, the latter name being that of a current member of the Supreme Court.
7. Seagal
Assistant to the High Priest
2)The German Impact on Jewish Ashkenazi Names. I
While some Jewish individuals have chosen biblical names, the vast majority of Jewish people have German names and a smaller percentage Slavic name. That raises the interesting question as to why so many Jewish Individuals have east European names. As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, the answer unfortunately is tied up with the religious conflict that marked the Middle Ages.
To briefly recap that discussion, we need to remember that in light of the religious intensity that often accompanied the effort of the Crusades to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land in the 12thto the 13th century, many western nations became hostile to all non-Christians in Europe. As a result, countries like England and Spain often forced their local Jewish population to leave their homes and seek asylum elsewhere.
In search for a new home the many Jewish individual from western Europe ended up living in Poland whose Kings welcomed them because he thought they would enhance the Polish economy. However, when Germany and Russia later attacked Poland and divided their country between them in the 18th and 19th century, many Jewish people found themselves living in either German controlled or Russian dominated territories. While historically before Hitler, the Jewish population fared better in Germany than in the Slavic areas of Russia, many Jews preferred to adopt German names even when living in Slavic territories like Russia.
In light of these historical conditions, there are certain German suffixes or endings of surnames that commonly are found among Jewish people. These German endings usually refers to a thing like a stone or a topographical item such as a village or mountain. Below are 7 of the most common German suffixes adopted by people of Jewish ancestry.
1.Names ending in berg. Berg means hill or mountain or cliff: Example. Weinberg
2. Names ending in burg Names means living near a castle
3. Names ending in baum Refers to someone who lives near a notable tree
4.Names ending in blum Means Flower: Example Rosenblum
5.Names ending in feld The ending mean field. Example Seinfeld.
6. Names ending in stein. Stein means stone. Examples, Goldstein or Einstein
Stein is a German world that can be pronounced as either steen or stein. In German it would be pronounced as stein but in English there is a rule if you have two vowels next to one another, the first does the talking. Thus stein is often pronounced as steen but it can vary from one family to the next, For instance Senator Diane Feinstein relies on the German pronunciation rather than the American whereas Mike Goldstein uses the American pronunciation.
7.Names ending in thal Thal refers to a valley. Example Blumenthal
3) The German Impact on Ashkenazi Surname II
The Key Role Mann plays in many German and German Jewish Names
Besides the above well known suffixes, many German names and German Jewish names end in the word man or mann. But in contrast to the suffixes that we just described above which primarily describe topographical features such as a mountain or valley, the suffix mann identifies either the occupation of a person or his personal traits.
This tendency of the German language to attach the word man to an occupation is also common in the English language as we talk about a mailman or a congressman or an admirable man. The main difference between the English and German language is that in English we do not use such designations as surnames while the Germans often employ mann or man as part of a person’s surname.
Examples are: What the Surname means
1. Ackermann Ploughman
2. Hoffman Steward
3. Kauffman Merchant
4. Zimmerman Carpenter
5. Edelman Admirable Man
6. Newman New Man
4) The Slavic Influence on Ashkenazi surnames.
While many Jewish names are German in nature, the Slavic language has also influenced the naming practices of Jewish individuals, especially in Eastern Europe in general and Russia or Poland in particular.
The later Russian or Slavic influence on Jewish names is reflected in surnames ending in vich or witz, or ski or sky. These two very different endings of surnames refer to locations within Eastern Europe. The vich or witz endings refers to the Slavic area of Pomeranian or today’s Gdansk in Poland, The sky and sky endings may also refer to a particular location a persona originally came from. Thus Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is from the areas around Zelen.
1.Wich Examples. Berkowicz
2.Witz Examples Abramowitz or Rabinowitz
3. Ski or Sky. If it is ski it is Polish Examples. Zelensky. Or Wildavski
B. The Five Traditional Source of most Jewish Surnames
If we now leave aside the impact of the Bible as well the influence of the German and Slavic Languages on Jewish surnames, most Jewish names reflect the five Factors that have traditionally determined the meaning of most surnames.
1) Jewish Names that mean son of or Patronymic Surnames
1. Ben Ben Gurion the father of modern day Israel
2. Berkowicz Son of Berk
2) Occupational Names
1. Ackerman Ploughman
2. Blecher One who worked with tin.
3. Brandwein A distiller of brandy spirits
4. Herzog Means duke or the servant of a duke
5. Hoffman Means a steward or farm laborer
6. Goldstein Perhaps in the gold design business
7. Kaster Manager of a granary
8. Koeniig Means King
9. Kramer A shopkeeper or tradesman
10. Kreigsman Warrior
11. Mann Generally means person.
12. Nagel Nail Maker
13. Oberman Means chief and often indicates a rabbi
14. Portnoy A tailor. Name of a famous novel.
15. Rabinowitz A name meaning son of a Rabbi
16. Rabin Indicating descendants of a rabbi
17. Sack. One who made or sold Sacks.
18. Sandler One who repairs shoes.
19. Sanger Singer
20. Schechter One who slaughtered cattle and sold meat
21. Scherer One who shaved others.
22. Schmidt Blacksmith
23. Schneider Tailor
24. Schubert A shoemaker or cobbler
25. Schultz A dues collector or a rabbi
26. Schuster Also a shoemaker.
27. Weidman Hunter or wood farmer
28. Zuckerman A name for one who sells sugar.
3) Locational Surnames
a.Actual Location of a city or region
Many took the names of places or cities such as Halle or Bamberger
1. Bamberger From Bamberger
2. Dreyfus From the German city of Triet
3. Epstein A city in Hesse that has many stones
4. Frank From Franconia.
5. Halper or Heilbroner From the city of Heilbronn in Germany.
6. Heller From Halle a town in Germany.
7. Spanier One who came from Spain.
8. Shapiro One from Spyer
9. Pollack One who came from Poland.
b. Habitat: Distinctive place in nature like a valley with flowers
1.Barton An enclosed field
2. Berg Hill or Mountain or Cliff
3. Berger One coming from a hilly place.
4. Bloomberg Flower and Mountains
5. Bloomfield Flower field
6. Blumenthal Flowers in a valley
7. Borg or Burg German for being near a fortified castle.
8. Buch German for living near a Beech tree
9. Einstein It means to enclose or surround with stones
10. Feinberg It means a beutifull hill
11. Feldman Someone who lived on land cleared of trees
12. Jablonski Polish for a place with an apple tree
13. Keller Aa cellar or underground room
14.Klein You live on a wedge shaped piece of land.
15. Leitner One who lives on the side of a mountain.
16.Morgenthau A geographical place such as morning valley.
17. Sachs A memory of persecuted forebearers.
18.Seinfeld His field or Sea Field
19. Steiger Dutch for settler on or near the pier.
20. Stein Mean stone, or rock or glass.
4) Characteristics or Attributional Surnames
1. Adelman Honorable Man
2. Altman Old man
3. Edelman Like Adelman it means honorable.
4. Friedman A man of peace.
5.Greif A person who grasps or snatches.
6. Grossman The big one. Similar to Grant in English
7. Kuhn Brave
8. Kurtz Short
9. Lange The long one.
10. Lieber Lover
11. Liberman Beloved man
12. Meier The scholar man
13. Meyer Means light in Hebrew.
14. Novack Slavic surname meaning newcomer
15. Schoenman Beautiful
16. Schwartz Black appearance
17. Shapiro Pretty or Lovely
18. Switzer Pleasant
19. Romer Refers to a a pilgrim
20. Weiss White appearance
5) Item Surnames
In the past when illiteracy in Europe was still the rule rather than the exception, a house had, instead of a street number, an identifying sign painted and cut in the shape that took a variety of shapes such as a red shield or a fox or a rose tree on its front. Many Jews simply and somewhat whimsically took as surnames these signs on the house where they lived.
a.Beautiful things. When the German government forced Jewish people to have surnames, many of them commonly used combinations of of words to describe some attractive or beautiful items such as Goldstein for gold stones or an ideal and beautiful location such as Goldberg which means gold mountain. While the British were very prosaic and often chose common place items for surnames such as trees or wooded areas (Holt), or a clearing in a forest (Rodda), many Jewish individuals argued that if they had to have a surname, it should be a name of some idyllic place or beautiful object. As a result, Jewish surname that focus on items are often called Ornamental Surnames or surname that reflect some attractive item or location.
1.Bernstein Burnt stone
2. Bloom Flower
3. Bloomingdale Flower dale in which dale mean valley
4. Garfinkle Red Stone. Surname of Art Garfinkle
5. Goldman Probably from a line of goldsmiths.
6. Goldstein Gold stone
7.Goldwater Gold with water.
8. Green Refers to the color Green
9. Newman or Neuberger The German word for New
10. Rubin Behold a Son
11. Rose Roses
12. Rosenberg Mountain of Roses.
13. Rosenblatt Rose Paper or Leaf
14. Rothman Red Man
15 Rubenstein. Ruby Stone
16. Silverstein Ornamental name silver stone
17. Stein Glass or stone.
18. Morgenstern From German meaning morning star.
b. Names on Houses
As mentioned earlier, in Austria and German addresses of houses often had signs rather than numbers. When the German government ordered people to take surnames, many Jewish people adopted the sign on their house as their surname.
1. Rothschild Red shield.
2. Rosenstock Rose Tree
3. Strauss Ostrich or bouquet or knight crest.
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