Jewish surnames - origin

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

As the popular anecdote says, there is no such object in the world that would not serve as a food for a Chinese, and a surname for a Jew. This is partly true, since the origin of Jewish surnames has its own history, numbering more than three hundred years. The people themselves have existed for much longer, but since they were once

is similar to gypsies and did not have a specific place of deployment, then its representatives did not need surnames either. They lived scattered all over the world. However, in the 18th century, laws were passed obliging all Jews to acquire surnames so that they could be somehow identified.

It can be said that almost all Jewish surnames are created artificially. They are derived from names, both male and female, as well as from professions, from the names of animals, from appearance, from geographical names, etc. The most common surnames are those that have such clergy titles as “cohen” and “levi” in their roots, for example: Kaplan, Kogan, Katz, Kaganovich, Levinsky, Levitan, Levit, Levinson, Levin andetc.

If there were no priests in the family, then often Jewish surnames were invented from names, to which the ending or suffix was simply added. This is how Samuels, Abrahams, Israels, Mendelssohn and others appeared. If a surname formed from a given name ends in -zon or -son, this means that its bearer is the son of a certain person. For example: the son of Abram is Abramson, the son of Michael is Michaelson, the son of Mendel is Mendelssohn, etc. In exactly the same way, Jewish surnames appeared, derived from female names, because it is known that women are very revered by the children of Israel. For example, Rivkin, Sorinson, Tsivyan, Beilis are derivatives of the names Rivka, Sarah, Tsiva and Beila, respectively. Jews who lived in Tsarist Russia had the suffix -evich or -ovich added to their names. Thus, Abramovichi, Berkevichi, Arevichi, Khagaevichi and others turned out.

Very many Jewish surnames are formed from the names of professions. The most popular is, of course, Rabinovich, since she came from such a religious profession as a rabbi. From here follow Rabin, Rabinzon, Rabiner and others with similar roots. If you come across the surname Shuster, this means that there were certainly shoemakers in the family of this person. The surnames Kramer, Gendler and Schneider are translated as "shopkeeper", "merchant" and "tailor", respectively.

Jewish surnames, the list of which follows, come from geographical names: Gomel, Lemberg, Sverdlov, Klebanov, Teplitsky,Podolsky, Volynsky, Lvov, Lioznov, etc. Some surnames may sound like Russians, for example, Mudrik, Gorbonos, Zdorovyak, Belenky, etc. But do not be deceived, because they appeared due to the appearance or character traits of their owners. There are also a lot of artificially created surnames, which consist of two roots connected to each other. For example, Goldenberg, Rosenbaum, Glickman, Rosenfeld, Goldman can literally be translated as “golden mountain”, “rose tree” (meaning not a color, but a flower), “happy person”, “pink field”, “golden person”, respectively.