Jewish Family Names and Their Origins

Jewish Family Names and Their Origins
Author: Heinrich Walter Guggenheimer
Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Total Pages: 932
Release: 1992
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780881252972

Book of Jewish and Crypto-Jewish Surnames

Book of Jewish and Crypto-Jewish Surnames
Author: Judith K. Jarvis
Publisher: Panther`s Lodge Publishers
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2018-05-10
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1985856565

From unlikely places like Scotland and the Appalachian Mountains to the Bible and archives of the Spanish Inquisition, this valuable resource published in 2018 is the first to cover the naming practices of Conversos, Marranos and secret Jews along with more familiar Central and Eastern European Jewries. It includes Joseph Jacobs’ classic work on Jewish Names, a chapter on Scottish clans and septs, thousands of Sephardic and Ashkenazic surnames from early colonial records and Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s 445 Early American Jewish Families. Appendix A contains 400 surnames from the Greater London cemetery Adath Yisroel. Appendix B provides a combined name index to the indispensable When Scotland Was Jewish, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America and The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales, all by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates. It contains 276 pages and has an extensive index and bibliography. “Up-to-date and valuable research tool for genealogists and those interested in Jewish origins.” —Eran Elhaik, Assistant Professor, The University of Sheffield

A Rosenberg by Any Other Name

A Rosenberg by Any Other Name
Author: Kirsten Fermaglich
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-02-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479872997

Winner, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society A groundbreaking history of the practice of Jewish name changing in the 20th century, showcasing just how much is in a name Our thinking about Jewish name changing tends to focus on clichés: ambitious movie stars who adopted glamorous new names or insensitive Ellis Island officials who changed immigrants’ names for them. But as Kirsten Fermaglich elegantly reveals, the real story is much more profound. Scratching below the surface, Fermaglich examines previously unexplored name change petitions to upend the clichés, revealing that in twentieth-century New York City, Jewish name changing was actually a broad-based and voluntary behavior: thousands of ordinary Jewish men, women, and children legally changed their names in order to respond to an upsurge of antisemitism. Rather than trying to escape their heritage or “pass” as non-Jewish, most name-changers remained active members of the Jewish community. While name changing allowed Jewish families to avoid antisemitism and achieve white middle-class status, the practice also created pain within families and became a stigmatized, forgotten aspect of American Jewish culture. This first history of name changing in the United States offers a previously unexplored window into American Jewish life throughout the twentieth century. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name demonstrates how historical debates about immigration, antisemitism and race, class mobility, gender and family, the boundaries of the Jewish community, and the power of government are reshaped when name changing becomes part of the conversation. Mining court documents, oral histories, archival records, and contemporary literature, Fermaglich argues convincingly that name changing had a lasting impact on American Jewish culture. Ordinary Jews were forced to consider changing their names as they saw their friends, family, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors do so. Jewish communal leaders and civil rights activists needed to consider name changers as part of the Jewish community, making name changing a pivotal part of early civil rights legislation. And Jewish artists created critical portraits of name changers that lasted for decades in American Jewish culture. This book ends with the disturbing realization that the prosperity Jews found by changing their names is not as accessible for the Chinese, Latino, and Muslim immigrants who wish to exercise that right today.

Jewish Personal Names

Jewish Personal Names
Author: Shmuel Gorr
Publisher: Avotaynu
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1992
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

"This book shows the roots of more than 1,200 Jewish personal names. It shows all Yiddish/Hebrew variants of a root name with English transliteration. Hebrew variants show the exact spelling including vowels. Footnotes explain how these variants were derived. An index of all variants allows you to easily locate the name in the body of book. Also presented are family names originating from personal names."--Publisher description.

Historical Implications of Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania

Historical Implications of Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania
Author: Alexander Avram
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0271091940

Linguistic and semantic features in names—and surnames in particular—reveal evidence of historical phenomena, such as migrations, occupational structure, and acculturation. In this book, Alexander Avram assembles and analyzes a corpus of more than 28,000 surnames, including phonetic and graphic variants, used by Jews in Romanian-speaking lands from the sixteenth century until 1944, the end of World War II in Romania. Mining published and unpublished sources, including Holocaust-period material in the Yad Vashem Archives and the Pages of Testimony collection, Avram makes the case that through a careful analysis of the surnames used by Jews in the Old Kingdom of Romania, we can better understand and corroborate different sociohistorical trends and even help resolve disputed historical and historiographical issues. Using onomastic methodology to substantiate and complement historical research, Avram examines the historical development of these surnames, their geographic patterns, and the ways in which they reflect Romanian Jews’ interactions with their surroundings. The resulting surnames dictionary brings to light a lesser-known chapter of Jewish onomastics. It documents and preserves local naming patterns and specific surnames, many of which disappeared in the Holocaust along with their bearers. Historical Implications of Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania is the third volume in a series that includes Pleasant Are Their Names: Jewish Names in the Sephardi Diaspora and The Names of Yemenite Jewry: A Social and Cultural History, both of which are available from Penn State University Press. This installment will be especially welcomed by scholars working in Holocaust studies.

Becoming Frum

Becoming Frum
Author: Sarah Bunin Benor
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2012-11-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0813553911

When non-Orthodox Jews become frum (religious), they encounter much more than dietary laws and Sabbath prohibitions. They find themselves in the midst of a whole new culture, involving matchmakers, homemade gefilte fish, and Yiddish-influenced grammar. Becoming Frum explains how these newcomers learn Orthodox language and culture through their interactions with community veterans and other newcomers. Some take on as much as they can as quickly as they can, going beyond the norms of those raised in the community. Others maintain aspects of their pre-Orthodox selves, yielding unique combinations, like Matisyahu’s reggae music or Hebrew words and sing-song intonation used with American slang, as in “mamish (really) keepin’ it real.” Sarah Bunin Benor brings insight into the phenomenon of adopting a new identity based on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research among men and women in an American Orthodox community. Her analysis is applicable to other situations of adult language socialization, such as students learning medical jargon or Canadians moving to Australia. Becoming Frum offers a scholarly and accessible look at the linguistic and cultural process of “becoming.”

A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames

A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames
Author: Lars Menk
Publisher: Bergenfield, NJ : Avotaynu
Total Pages: 832
Release: 2005
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

This dictionary identifies more than 13,000 German-Jewish surnames from the area that was pre-World War I Germany. From Baden-Wuerttemburg in the south to Schleswig-Holstein in the north. From Westfalen in the west to East Prussia in the east. In addition to providing the etymology and variants of each name, it identifies where in the region the name appeared, identifying the town and time period. More than 300 sources were used to compile the book. A chapter provides the Jewish population in many towns in the 19th century.