The etymology of Sephardi surnames: achievements and perspectives (original) (raw)
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Basic Sources of Sephardic Surnames
Dorot - the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York), 2021
The article provides a synthetic information concerning the surnames used by two groups of Sephardi Jews: (1) those expelled from Iberian Peninsula during the 1490s; (2) "Portuguese" Jews (ex-New Christians). For each of these groups, the main types of the surnames are discussed.
Exceptional Ashkenazic Surnames of Sephardic Origin
Conclusion about marginal role Sephardic Jews played in the development of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe should not be oversimplified to consider that no Sephardim ever joined Ashkenazi communities. The article address five surnames used in Ashkenazic families: (1) two from Eastern Europe others than those discussed in previous publications, for which the odds are high that they indeed reveal the Sephardic origin of the family progenitors; (3) three from Prague whose usual consideration as Sephardic is firmly confirmed for one, is wrong for another, and appears to be rather questionable for the third one.
Pseudo-Sephardic Surnames from Italy
The article discusses examples of mixtures between groups of Italian Jews of various origins (Ashkenazic, Italiani, Sephardic), mixtures that can lead to confusion about the origin of names and show the complexity of the origins of Italian Jews. These examples illustrate a general point, namely that the onomastic approach can provide valuable information for history and genealogy.
Scientific Approach to Etymology of Surnames
Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 2005
The aim of this paper is to show a possible approach in the domain of etymology of surnames for which the label “scientific” would be appropriate. It discusses the reasons of the law status of that branch of onomastics in scholarly circles. A scientific approach asks to provide a conjecture that would be the most corroborated by various factors among which are: answers, correlated with the etymon and between them, provided to other main questions of the etymological research; results of the statistical analysis of surnames of other families belonging to the same ethno-cultural group; knowledge concerning the general historical and linguistic background of the time of the surname adoption; finding of the family genealogical data concerning the time of the surname adoption; and existence of the testimony concerning the surname adoption.
This paper is divided in two sections. The first (and preliminary) part includes (a) a brief account of the Semitic strain in the Maltese language, and (b) a brief account of Arabic naming practices, particulalry the use of ism, kunyah, nisba, and laqab. The second (and main) part analyzes the etymology of several extant Maltese surnames, such as Saliba, Cassar, Abdilla, Farrugia, Micallef, Sammut, Fenech, and Zammit (all dating back to medieval times) which, in some way or another, reflect such Arabic nomenclature. It will be observed that most of these surnames also prevail in present-day Sicily, which was similarly under Arab rule.
The Notion of ‘Jewish Surnames’
Journal of Jewish Languages, 2018
This article discusses the notion of ‘Jewish surnames,’ considering it to be synonymous to the expression ‘surnames borne by Jews.’ This can be particularly helpful if we want the definition to add real value for the search of etymologies. The article describes most important peculiarities of Jewish surnames, categories of names that are exclusively Jewish, and various cases when a surname is shared by both Jews and non-Jews. It shows that certain alternative definitions of the notion of ‘Jewish surnames’ (such as surnames found in all Jewish communities, surnames used by Jews only, surnames based on specifically Jewish linguistic elements) either have internal inconsistencies or are useless and sometimes misleading for the scientific analysis of the etymologies of these surnames.
2001
These introductory chapters to the dictionary of traditional Ashkenazic given names cover the following topics: (1) Ashkenazic naming traditions (including the use of religious [shemot ha-qodesh] and vernacular [kinnuim] personal names for men, the use of double given names, frequency), (2) inception of names (calques, borrowed from non-Jews or Jewish texts, plain creation), (3) creation of hypocoristic and pet forms (with / without suffixes), (4) phonetic changes related to the development of Yiddish phonology; (5) origins of communities analyzed using onomastic data.
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