Jewish Names
Level: Basic |
Historically, Jews did not have permanent family surnames at all. Within
the Jewish community, we used patronymics, such as David ben (son of) Joseph
or Miriam bat (daughter of) Aaron. Names in that form are still used in
synagogue and in Jewish legal documents
such as the ketubah (marriage contract), but
are rare outside of the religious context. See the discussion of
Hebrew Names below.
Family names began to gain popularity among
Sephardic Jews in Spain, Portugal and Italy
as early as the 10th or 11th century, but did not catch on among the
Ashkenazic Jews of Germany or Eastern Europe
until much later.
Contrary to popular belief, you cannot tell whether people are Jewish from
their surnames. According to the Jewish genealogy site
Avotaynu, the third most common surname
among Jews in the United States is Miller, which is also one of the most
common names among gentiles. In college, I knew a McGuire who was Jewish
and a Kline who was not. The Jewish people can take pride in the accomplishments
of artist Camille Pissarro, boxer Daniel Mendoza, actor Hank Azaria and pop
idol Paula Abdul, all of whom are Jewish but whose names don't sound Jewish
to most Americans. We cannot, however, take credit for people with such
Jewish-sounding names such as rocker Bruce Springsteen, pop singer Avril
Lavigne, songwriter George M. Cohan, former Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger or basketball player Julius Irving ("Dr. J").
A lot of the surnames that sound Jewish to Americans are simply German names
such as Klein, Gross or Grossman, Weiss or Weisman, Rosen, Schwartz or
Schwartzman, Segal, Siegal or Sagal, and anything that contains berg, stein,
man, thal or bluth. German surnames are very common among American Jews,
and many people seem to have inferred the converse: if most Jews have German
surnames, then most people with German surnames must be Jews. The reasoning
is appealing on a gut-level but logically flawed. Consider this absurd but
logically identical argument: most Jews have ten fingers, therefore most
people with ten fingers must be Jews.
One reason for the frequency of German names among Jews is related to a
misunderstanding of a 1787 Austro-Hungarian law. The Austro-Hungarian Empire,
which controlled a substantial part of Europe, was the first country in Europe
that required Jews to register a permanent family surname. At the same time,
they required Jews to register a German given name. The decree was widely
misinterpreted as requiring a German surname, so the overwhelming majority
of Jewish surnames created for that registration were German ones. This explains
the frequency of German surnames in Western Europe, but it doesn't explain
the frequency of German surnames for Jews in the Russian Empire, where German
surnames for Jews are also common. The frequency of German family names among
Russia may be due to migration from Western Europe.
Russian and Polish surnames are also often assumed to be Jewish surnames,
for example names ending in -vitz, -witz, or -sky. It is commonly believed
that "-sky" is a Jewish surname while "-ski" is not. This spelling difference,
however, seems do have more to do with the source of the surname: Russia
or Poland. The correct spelling of this common surname suffix in Polish is
"-ski", and Poles usually kept that spelling after immigration to America.
In Russia, this suffix is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet,
 ,
and may have been transliterated into English as either -ski or -sky. However,
a Jewish friend of mine who comes from Moscow tells me that in Russia, names
ending in
were usually Jewish.
There are really only three surnames that are specifically Jewish in nature:
variations on Cohen, Levy and Israel. These names are derived from tribal
ancestry that were recorded by the Jewish people and recognized in
synagogue with various distinctions.
The surname Cohen comes from kohein, the
Hebrew word for priest, and refers to patrilineal
descendants of Aaron. Variations on this surname
include Cohn, Cahn, Cone, Kohn, Kahn and possibly Katz. Why Katz? I have
been told that it is an acronym of Kohein Tzaddik, which means Righteous
Priest, but is close enough to the German word for "cat" that it could be
slipped past registrars who required German surnames!
The surname Levy comes from the biblical tribe of
Levi, whose descendants the Levites had distinctive
duties in the Temple period. Variations on
this surname include Levin, Levine, Levitt and many others.
Cohen and Levy are the two most common surnames among Jews in the United
States (Miller is third, as mentioned above). Another specifically Jewish
surname is Israel, which is much less common. Jewish thought often divides
Jews into three groups: Kohein, Levy and Israel. Israel basically means the
rest of us. Variations on this surname include Israeli, Yisrael, Yisroel
and most notably Disraeli (the surname of a Jewish-born British Prime Minister
and Earl who was baptized as a child but apparently retained some sense of
Jewish identity).
Even these common specifically-Jewish surnames can be misleading, though.
The surname Cohan (as in songwriter George M.) is usually Irish rather than
Jewish. The surname Lavigne (as in singer Avril) is pronounced much like
Levine, but it is a common gentile name among French Canadians.
Among Ashkenazic Jews (Jews from Germany
and Eastern Europe), it is customary to name children after a recently deceased
relative. This is a way of honoring the dead and of keeping the dead person's
memory alive. The name given to the child is not always identical; it is
often changed to reflect the popular names of the time, but usually retains
the sound or at least the first initial. For example, a grandmother named
Elsie might be remembered through a granddaughter named Elizabeth or Kelsey.
A grandfather named Leopold might be remembered through a grandson named
Leonard or Lawrence. Sometimes the change reflects the change in language
from the country where the ancestor was born to the country where the child
was born: a Hungarian-born grandfather named Antal might be remembered through
an American grandson named Anthony. These kinds of changes occur only in
secular names; Hebrew names are usually passed along intact. Many consider
it to be disrespectful to change the Hebrew name. See the discussion of
Hebrew Names below.
It is not unusual for multiple relatives to be named after the same
recently-deceased person. My grandfather Samuel had a first cousin named
Samuel who was born about three years before him. They were probably named
for their uncle, also named Samuel, who was close to the family. Similarly,
my great-uncle Donald had a first cousin named Donald born about two years
before him. Presumably, they were also named for a shared relative that I
have not yet identified. In fact, Jewish genealogists often infer a relationship
when they find two people with the same name (first and last) born within
a few years of each other.
When a child is formally named, either at a
bris (circumcision) for boys or in a
synagogue naming ceremony for girls (see Naming
a Child), it is common practice to explain who the child was named for,
why the child was named for that person, and what qualities of that person
the parents would like to see perpetuated in the child.
An old superstition maintains that naming a child after a living relative
is bad luck: the angel of death, an easily confused spirit, might take the
baby by mistake when coming for the older relative. It reminds me oddly of
the Showtime series "Dead Like Me" (featuring Jewish actor
Mandy Patinkin), where
grim reapers take souls based on a name written on a Post-It note. Although
most of us don't believe that superstition any more, many Jews still view
it as strange and somewhat arrogant for a father to name a child after himself.
In fact, it is so rare for Jews to name a child after a living relative that
a colleague of mine once declared it "impossible" for there to be a Jewish
"Jr." Nevertheless, this custom has broken down somewhat in recent years.
My father is a Jewish "Jr." and would have made my brother a Jewish "III"
if my mother hadn't objected. My childhood dentist was a Jewish "III" with
a son who was a Jewish "IV"!
There do not seem to be many given names in English that are distinctively
Jewish, other than Israel and variations on it. Certainly, biblical names
like David, Joseph and Michael are popular among Jews, but those names are
also among the top-10 first names overall in the 1990 United States census.
For obvious reasons, names like Christopher, Christine and Jesus are almost
unheard of among Jews and Mary is unusual, but names like Peter and Paul
that you would think of as very Christian are surprisingly common among Jews.
Names that were once thought of as stereotypically Jewish, such as Ira, Irving
and Isadore, were actually attempts to Americanize Hebrew names like Isaac
and Israel, and in any case are quite rare in America today.
Jews living in gentile lands have historically
taken local names to use when interacting with their gentile neighbors. Anyone
with a hard-to-pronounce name will immediately understand the usefulness
of this! The practice of taking local names became so common, in fact, that
by the 12th century, the rabbis found it necessary
to make a takkanah (rabbinical ruling) requiring
Jews to have a Hebrew name!
Hebrew names are used in prayer in and out
of synagogue and for other religious rituals.
When a person is called up in synagogue for an
aliyah (the honor of reciting a blessing over
a Torah reading), he is called up by his
Hebrew name. The names that appear on a
ketubah (marriage contract) or on a
get (writ of divorce) are Hebrew names. When a
people are ill and mi shebeirakh prayers are recited for their well-being,
they are identified by Hebrew names. When a deceased person is remembered
through the Yizkor prayers recited on certain
holidays, the Hebrew name is used. Jewish
tombstones sometimes carry the Hebrew name
instead of or side-by-side with the secular name.
A Hebrew name begins with a given name, followed by ben (son of) or bat (daughter
of), followed by the person's father's Hebrew name. If the person is a
kohein (descendant of
Aaron), the name is followed by "ha-Kohein."
If the person is a Levite (descendant of the
tribe of Levi), the name is followed by "ha-Levi." If the person or his father
is a rabbi, some follow the name with "ha-Rav."
This format of naming is seen as early as the
Torah where, for example,
Moses' successor Joshua is repeatedly referred
to as Yehoshua ben Nun (Joshua, son of Nun). Note that the surname is not
the same from generation to generation:
Abraham's son
Isaac is Yitzchak ben Avraham; Isaac's son
Jacob is Ya'akov ben Yitzchak, and so forth.
Moses' Hebrew name would be Moshe ben Amram ha-Levi (because he is a member
of the tribe of Levi but not a descendant of Aaron), while his brother Aaron
would be Aharon ben Amram ha-Kohein (because Aaron was a priest).
The secular name usually corresponds in some way to the Hebrew name. Sometimes,
the name is exactly the same or an Anglicized version of the same name: David,
Michael or Sarah are as good in Hebrew as they are in English, though they
are pronounced differently. A person with the Hebrew name Yosef would probably
have the English name Joseph and Rivka might be in English Rebecca. Sometimes,
the English name retains only part of the Hebrew name, for example, Aharon
might become Aaron in English, but it might also become Harry or Ronald.
Sometimes, the English name retains only the first letter of the Hebrew name:
Pinchas becomes Philip or Nechama becomes Natalie.
There are no hard-and-fast rules about how to translate Hebrew names into
English, and indeed, there is no real reason why a person's secular name
has to correspond to the Hebrew name at all.
Below are ten Hebrew names for each gender that are among the 100 most popular
names in the United States according to the 1990 census. Note that some of
these names are not used as names for people in the
Tanakh: Sharon is a place name; Shoshanah is
a flower. Some of these names were more significant in post-biblical literature
or Christian scriptures than in the Tanakh: Elizabeth, Judith and Susanna
(Shoshanah).
Male Names
| Aaron (Aharon) |
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| Adam |
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| Benjamin |
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| Daniel |
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| David |
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| Jonathan (Y'honatan) |
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| Joseph |
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| Joshua (Y'hoshua) |
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| Michael |
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| Samuel (Sh'mu'el) |
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|
Female Names
| Deborah |
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| Elizabeth (Elisheva) |
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| Judith (Y'hudit) |
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| Mary (Miriam) |
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| Rachel |
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| Rebecca (Rivka) |
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| Ruth |
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| Sarah |
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| Sharon (a place name in the Bible) |
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| Susan (Shoshanah) |
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Looking for a Hebrew name for your baby? Or would you just like to know what
a particular Hebrew name means? Then check out
Hebrew
Baby Names from a Jewish Community Center website based in Arizona. Search
by name or meaning. It provides several variations on the name, the meaning
of the name as a word in Hebrew, and in many cases identifies biblical figures
who have the name. It also provides some tips for choosing a name and some
information about naming customs.
Genealogy: it's not just a hobby; it's an obsession. I mention it on this
page because one of the reasons people want to know about Jewish names is
to help with their research into their Jewish roots. If you're as obsessed
with Jewish genealogy as I am, then you need to run, don't walk, to
JewishGen. It is a sprawling site
and not as well organized as I might like, but it has a wealth of valuable
information about how to research your Jewish roots and many freely available
databases. Much of the information about
Hungarian
Jewish surnames on this page came from an article on JewishGen.
And while we're on the subject of genealogy, check out
Avotaynu (the name means "our fathers"),
a journal of Jewish genealogy that has been in business for more than 20
years. They publish a wealth of useful books to help you with your research.
Their site includes the
Consolidated Jewish Surname
Index, which lets you search for your family names in several dozen different
databases simultaneously.
© Copyright 5765-5766 (2005-2006), Tracey
R Rich
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