History of Jewish Names in Eastern Europe and Surnames in the Russian Empire (original) (raw)

History, Adoption, and Regulation of Jewish Surnames in the Russian Empire

Surname DNA Journal, 2014

Analysis of the formation of surnames by the Jewish population of the 19th century Russian Empire. Description of the cultural and legal context of Ashkenazi Jewish surnames in Russia with examples taken from census records. Provides insight to genealogists on the legally mandated creation of different surnames within individual families followed by a period of relative surname stability into the 20th century. Surname derivation from toponyms with the "sky" suffix were most common followed by patronymics with the "vich" suffix and then derivation from occupations or nicknames. Between 1880 and 1924, over two million Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews immigrated to America from the Russian Empire, where repeated pogroms made life untenable. They came from Jewish diaspora communities in the Russian Pale of Settlement (the territory where Jews were permitted to live in the Russian Empire, encompassing modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova), the vast majority of them entering America through the Port of New York, at Ellis Island. Many of these Jewish immigrants had strange, foreign-sounding surnames, very different from the surnames of their American-born children and grandchildren. How did these immigrants originally obtain their Russian or Eastern European surnames? Where did they get them from, and how long did they have them? When, where, and why were they changed? That is the topic of this review article, and some of the questions that it is intended to address. There has always been a certain mystique associated with Jewish surnames. Part of this mystique is due to the fact that many Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors immigrated to America, do not know how or where their surname originated, or even what they mean. They may be vaguely aware that their American surname was changed from a different ancestral surname in the old country, but the origin and history of their ancestral

Typology and Linguistic Aspects of surnames of Jews in the Russian Empire

Chapters 2 & 3 of: Beider, Alexander. 2008. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (revised edition). Bergenfield (2008), NJ: Avotaynu., 2008

These chapters cover the following topics: (1) Types of surnames (rabbinical and other migrated from other areas, patronymic, metronymic, toponymic, occupational, nickname-based, Cohen/Levite origin, artificial); (2) Morphology of surnames: suffixes used, acronymic surnames; (3) Languages used and their peculiarities (Yiddish, Hebrew, Slavic, German; (4) Distortions of surnames; (5) normalization (Russification, Slavonization, Yiddishizing, Germanizing)

The History, Adoption, and Regulation of Jewish Surnames in the Russian Empire – A Review

Surname DNA Journal, 2014

Introduction Between 1880 and 1924, over two million Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews immigrated to America from the Russian Empire, where repeated pogroms made life untenable. , They came from Jewish diaspora communities in the Russian Pale of Settlement (the territory where Jews were permitted to live in the Russian Empire, encompassing modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova), the vast majority of them entering America through the Port of New York, at Ellis Island. Many of these Jewish immigrants had strange, foreign-sounding surnames, very different from the surnames of their American-born children and grandchildren. How did these immigrants originally obtain their Russian or Eastern European surnames? Where did they get them from, and how long did they have them? When, where, and why were they changed? That is the topic of this review article, and some of the questions that it is intended to address. Background There has always been a certain mystique associated with Jewish surnames. Part of this mystique is due to the fact that many Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors immigrated to America, do not know how or where their surname originated, or even what they mean. They may be vaguely aware that their American surname was changed from a different ancestral surname in the old country, but the origin and history of their ancestral surname remains a mystery for most. This lack of knowledge regarding their ancestral surnames has led to many stories and legends among Jewish families about how their ancestors’ surnames were shortened or changed as they passed through Ellis Island, although the facts do not bear this out. Immigrant inspectors took the surnames directly as they were recorded in the ships’ manifests, and never altered them unless persuaded that a mistake had been made in spelling or rendering the name. However, Jewish immigrants frequently changed or “Americanized” their own surnames, often during the period between immigration and naturalization, the thought being that in America, it was more advantageous to have an American-sounding surname. There are similar misperceptions regarding the adoption and use of Jewish surnames in the Russian Empire. Jewish families often have oral histories which involve a grandfather or great-grandfather being adopted by another family, and his surname being changed to avoid conscription into the Russian army. In reality, however, adoption was not an option for most Jews living in the Pale of Settlement, and a series of czarist edicts, laws, and regulations made changing surnames very difficult for Jews in the Russian Empire throughout most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The history of the adoption, regulation, and use of Jewish surnames in the Russian Empire is quite complex. There were a myriad number of ways by which Jewish surnames were created, assigned, or adopted, while tight restrictions were placed on changing or altering surnames. One principal mandate was that members of different households had to adopt unique surnames. In response to these mandates, Jews adopted surnames based upon the places they were from, the occupation they had, their nickname, their spouses’ surname, their parents’ given name, the decisions of the Kahal (Jewish community council), or the whims of the local Russian authorities. As a result of these Russian laws and mandates, many non-related Jewish individuals acquired the same surname, while many related people acquired different surnames. This situation has created many challenges for genealogists who try to trace the ancestry or locate descendants of a particular Jewish lineage, many of whom have different surnames, as well as for interpreting the different results of DNA tests for Jewish descendants, who are assumed to be related because they share a common surname. The purpose of this review article is to explain the various laws and mandates pertaining to Jewish surnames in the Russian Empire, so that those who are interested in Jewish genealogy will better understand the complexities of Jewish surname adoption and use. The first section of the article presents a concise history and overview of these laws and mandates. The second section of this article examines the effect that these Russian laws and mandates had on the adoption and use of surnames by Jews living in the Pale of Settlement. For each of these laws and mandates, we provide actual examples of original censuses or other genealogical documents which demonstrate the effect that the specific law or mandate had on the adoption and use of Jewish surnames.

Dictionary of Jewish surnames from the Russian Empire : appendices

Appendices for: Beider, Alexander. 2008. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (revised edition). Bergenfield (2008), NJ: Avotaynu. , 2008

The following appendices are included here: (1) Hyphenated surnames (2) Most common Jewish surnames in the Russian Empire & USSR (3) Spelling changes (4) Suffixes found in Jewish surnames from the Russian Empire (5) Stress position in surnames (6) Main migrations of Jews internal to the Russian Empire

Names of People: Surnames in Pre-Modern Europe

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS, vol. 2, pp. 791-795, 2013

The paper discusses the Jewish surnames based on Hebrew that were created mainly in Ashkenazic communities of Eastern and Central Europe before mid-19th century. The large group was created in the Russian Empire. A few examples are also provided of Hebrew names used by Sephardic Jews.

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.