Specific Genealogy Jewish Genealogy Website History of Jewish Family Names
| History of Jewish Family Names |
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Hereditary family names developed at different times for different groups of people. The Chinese, for example, had hereditary family names dating back to 4th century, before the Common Era. Scandinavian countries developed mandatory family names as recently as mid-1800s (Kagnaoff, 1977). Jewish family names became more common in the 10th and 11th century as more Jews moved to the cities (Kagnaoff, 1977). The Jews of Spain, Portugal, and Italy had hereditary family names starting in the 14th century. In 1781 Emperor Joseph II of Austria promulgated the Edict Of Toleration for the Jews, which established the requirement for mandatory hereditary surnames. The Jews of Galicia did not adopt family names until 1785. Family names were then required throughout the Austrian Empire by the year 1787, with the exception of Hungary (Kaganoff, 1977 & Rottenberg, 1977). The great bulk of the Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe continued to follow the tradition of using the personal name plus the father’s name (patronymic system). For example, Yisrul ben Zalman, Avraham ben Zevi (Rottenberg, 1977). In Galicia the name a family received was often determined by the size of the registration fee that a particular family could afford to pay. Those families who were wealthy and/or could afford to pay a large fee received names that in Gerrman either denoted some form of wealth or related to something pleasant. For example, a precious metal like gold in Goldstein, or a flower like rose in Rosenthal. A lesser sum paid woud get a name based on more common items like Stahl (steel) or Eisen (iron). Those who were poor and could pay the lowest fee received names often related to nonsense syllables (Rottenberg, 1977). Most Jewish surnames were derived from one or more of the patterns listed in Table 1(Kaganoff, 1977). Since Jews often had to move from one country to another, their surnames names often changed as they were translated from one language to another. For example, a Jew may have had the name Weiss. It means white in German, but would become Blanco in Spain, Feher in Hungary, etc. (Kaganoff, 1977).
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