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    • Main contributor: Maor Malul
    Wordcloud hebrew surnames
    Wordcloud hebrew surnames

    Hebrew surnames are those surnames taken by Jews that can be either indicative of a religious, ancient origin, or created in modern times through a process called Hebraization of surnames (in Hebrew: עברות). Hebraization of surnames is a process associated with the rise of Zionism as a political movement and the aliyah of Jews from many parts of the world to the British Mandate of Palestine and later to the modern state of Israel, with the aim of creating a modern Israeli, free, and Hebrew-language-centric identity, distinct from that of the diasporic, often persecuted identity associated with the Jewish people throughout two thousand years after their expulsion from the Land of Israel.[1]

    History of Hebrew surnames

    Birth certificate of Yosef Levi. Haifa, 1954.
    Birth certificate of Yosef Levi. Haifa, 1954.

    The most common traditional Hebrew surnames are those derived from roles specified in the Torah (Hebrew Bible) like Cohen, Levi and their different spelling variants in different languages like Kohn, Levit, Halevy and Kagan. Apart from these, other traditional Hebrew surnames might be abbreviations[2][3] like Segal, which is derived from sgan leviyyah (assistant to the Levites),[4][5] Katz (kohen tsedek [righteous priest]) and Azoulay, an acronym of the biblical restriction on whom a Kohen may marry, which appears on Leviticus 21:7,[6] and Bogorad (Ben ha-rav Dovid).

    The modern process of Hebraization of surnames started to take place in the late days of the Ottoman Empire and was at its zenith during the British Mandate of Palestine period,[1] and continued after the establishment of the State of Israel. This phenomenon was especially common among Ashkenazi Jews, because many Ashkenazi families acquired permanent surnames of German origin only when surnames were made mandatory in the late 1700s in most places of Western, Central and Eastern Europe.[7] Sephardic Jews, by contrast, had been using hereditary family names since the 10th and 11th centuries, a practice followed by the Italian Jews.[8]

    Hebrew surnames conventions

    Tomb of David Ben-Gurion. Sde Boker, Israel.
    Tomb of David Ben-Gurion. Sde Boker, Israel.

    In Israel, surnames were made mandatory via a law that was passed in 1956.[9] This law was intended to ensure that the Arab minority of the country, especially the nomadic Bedouins in the South, as well as Jewish immigrants from places like Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, would use a hereditary family name, as surnames were not mandatory in many parts of the Middle East back then. This law was amended in 1996 in order to allow women to choose whether to retain their maiden name upon marriage, combine it with that of their husband, or adopt their husband's surname as their own, as well as to decide the surname their children would carry.

    Adoption of Hebrew surnames

    For many diaspora Jews who migrated to Israel, taking a Hebrew surname was a way to erase remnants of their diaspora experience and to assimilate into a new shared Jewish identity with Jewish residents of Ottoman Syria and Mandatory Palestine and later as Jewish citizens of the independent State of Israel. This process started with individuals like Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, considered the father of Modern Hebrew and who changed his surname from Perelman. 1944 was declared by the Zionist leadership in Mandatory Palestine as the "Year of naturalization and the Hebrew name", setting up a committee that published a booklet which contained guidelines on the creation of new Hebrew surnames,[10] with the aim of creating a uniform national and cultural Israeli-Hebrew identity.[9] These guidelines included the following:

    Changing a foreign surname to Hebrew

    First names as surnames

    Some surnames were derived from given names, such as:

    Change of names by adopting names of places, plants, or sites in the Land of Israel

    These guidelines were by no means a standard, with sometimes members of the same family Hebraizing their surnames using a different pattern, which can make research difficult for genealogists.[12] By the 1960s and 70s, the Hebraization of family names in had almost completely stopped to be in fashion, and today it is a relative rarity, with most olim retaining their original diasporic surnames.[1]

    Hebrew surnames of occupational origin

    Apart from the ancient Hebrew surnames that denoted a religious occupation, like Gabbai, Sofer, Hazan, Cohen, LeviLevi, Dayan ("religious judge"), Melamed ("educator") and Shalit ("ruler"), there are more modern Hebrew names associated with an occupation, like the following:

    Hebrew surnames of descriptive origin

    Some Hebrew surnames are associated with an animal, an object, or with a characteristic of the bearer, such as:

    Hebrew surnames of toponymic origin

    The Hebrew surnames that are either the name of a location or denote the topographic origin of its bearer are perhaps the most common category of modern Hebrew surnames, as the Jews immigrating to the Land of Israel wanted to reinforce their sense of belonging to the land, like:

    • Yerushalmi ("from Jerusalem")
    • Gilboa (a mountain range in Israel)
    • Gilad (a region in the East Bank of the Jordan River, where an ancient Israelite tribe settled)
    • Yarkoni ("from the Yarkon", a river in Israel)
    • Kishon (a river in Israel)
    • Sharon (a plain in Israel)
    • Yaari ("from the forest")
    • Litani (a river in South Lebanon)
    • Sinai (the mountain where the ancient Israelites received the Torah)
    • Hermoni ("from the Hermon", a mountain in Israel)
    • Kafri ("rural")
    • Golan (a plateau in Israel)
    • Ginosar (a variant of the Hebrew name of Gennesaret, a lake in Israel)

    Hebrew surnames based on a given name

    Some Hebrew surnames are commonly known as given names as well, like the following:

    Celebrities with a Hebrew surname

    Explore more about Hebrew surnames

    See also

    Authors template (click twice to edit)

    References

    1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 How and Why Jews Hebraized Their Family Names at the Founding of Israel. Mosaic Magazine
    2. ↑ Neumann, Joshua H. Some Acronymic Surnames. Revue internationale d'onomastique Année 1965 17-4 pp. 267-274
    3. ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion ed. Adele Berlin - 2011-p3 "Various family names are derived from abbreviations; for example, Katz (kohen tsedek [righteous priest]) and Segal (segan leviyyah [Levitical aide]). Abbreviations or acronyms were commonly employed in Talmudic literature as an exegetical ..."
    4. ↑ Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History ed. Kinga Frojimovics, Géza Komoróczy - 1999 p190 "Siegel / Segal / Segall / Chagall, etc.: segan levayya, leader of the Levites (sagan is a loanword from Ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian, originally denoting a dignity).
    5. ↑ Ladies' Home Journal Vol.90 page liii ed. Newell Convers Wyeth - 1973 "Thus levi Segal is a descendents of Ben Rabbi Judah Lowe became Brill; Segan Leviyyah became the surname Segal or Segel."
    6. ↑ Leviticus 21:7. Bible Hub
    7. ↑ November 12: Jews Acquire Family Names. Jewish Currents
    8. ↑ Genealogy: A lesson in the adoption of Jewish surnames. Tribune-Star
    9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Naor, Moshe. The Israeli Names Law: National Integration and Military Rule. Israel Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, Special Section—Dislocations of Immigration (Summer 2016), pp. 133-154
    10. ↑ Information Center - The Hebraicization of Surnames
    11. ↑ literally "disgusting names"
    12. ↑ Genealogy Gehenna: The Hebraization of Jewish Surnames
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