A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames From the Kingdom of Poland
Table of Contents
PART I
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .x
Introduction. General Problems of Eastern European Jewish Onomastics . . . . . . . . . xi
Where and When Did the Surname First Appear?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
What Word or Words Are the Basis for the Surname? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xii
How Was the Surname Created from This Word? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Why Was This Surname Chosen?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiv
Civil Records as Empirical Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Dangers in Onomastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Aims of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx
How to Use This Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxi
What to Do If You Cannot Find Your Surname Listed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxvii
Alphabets and Their Spellings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxviii
Hebrew and Yiddish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxviii
Cyrillic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
Phonetic Equivalents of Certain Polish Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
Administrative Subdivisions of the Kingdom of Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxx
Maps of the Kingdom of Poland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxxii
Map 1. The Partitions of Poland (1772þ1795) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxxii
Map 2. The Kingdom of Poland (1815þ1844). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiii
Map 3. The Kingdom of Poland at the Beginning of the 20th Century . . . . . . . .xxxiv
Main Localities in the Kingdom of Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv
Chapter 1. History of Jewish Names in Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Names in Jewish Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Names of Polish Jews in Christian Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Latin and German Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Sephardic Families in Poland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Partitions of Poland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Surname Adoption in Galicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Surname Adoption in South and New East Prussia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Surname Adoption in the Kingdom of Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Surnames in the Civil Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Surname Variations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Surname Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Pseudonyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Chapter 2. The Linguistics of Jewish Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Languages Used to Form Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Jewish Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Polish Phenomena. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Suffixes Found in Jewish Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Polish Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
German and Yiddish Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Chapter 3. Types of Jewish Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Geographical Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Surnames Derived from Given Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Surnames Derived from Toponyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Percentage of Surnames by Suffix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Artificial Surnames Drawn from German or Yiddish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Artificial Surnames Drawn from Polish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Chapter 4. Jewish Surnames That Coincide with Slavic Christian Surnames. . . . . . . . 42
Surnames Derived from Masculine Given Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Occupational Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Surnames Formed Semantically from Polish Words Designating Utensils,
Clothing, Shoes and Other Products or Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Surnames Formed Semantically from Polish Words Designating Plants,
Trees, Food, Beverages, Metals and Minerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Surnames Based on Personal Characteristics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Surnames That Designate Animals, Birds and Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Surnames Derived from Toponyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Surnames That Have Different Meanings for Jews and Christians . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Jewish Surnames Homonymic with Slavic Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Polish-Christian Surnames Borrowed by Jews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
German-Sounding Surnames Shared in Poland by Jews and Christians. . . . . . . . . . 48
Chapter 5. Spelling of Polish-Jewish Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
The Main Problem: German Versus Polish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Particular Scribes and Their Influence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Historical Changes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Russian as the Official Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Independent Poland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Spelling Used in the Dictionary of Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Appendix A. The Most Common Jewish Surnames in the Kingdom of Poland
At the Beginning of the 20th Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Appendix B. Jewish Migrations in the Kingdom of Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Migrations Caused by Legal Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Economic Migrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Rabbinical and Hasidic Migrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Dictionaries and Vocabularies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Principal Sources of Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Gazetteers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
PART II
Dictionary of Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
PART III
List of Surnames by the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .491
How to Use the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493
Tables
0.1 Surnames Whose Source Is a Given Name as Demonstrated by Civil Records . . . . . . .xv
0.2 Surnames Whose Source Is an Occupation Name as Demonstrated by Civil Records . . . xvi
0.3 Surnames Whose Source Is a Place Name as Demonstrated by Civil Records . . . . . .xvii
0.4 Variations of Polish Surnames by Gender and Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxii
0.5 German and Polish Letter Combinations That Are Equivalent or Close Phonetically. xxvii
1.1 Frequency of Surnames in Chþciny Civil Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
2.1 Language Distribution of Jewish Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
2.2 Morphological Distribution of Jewish Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
2.3 Polish Suffixes in Polish-Jewish Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
2.4 Palatalization of Polish Consonants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
2.5 German/Yiddish Suffixes Found in Polish-Jewish Surnames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
2.6 Umlaut in Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
3.1 Percentage of Jewish Surnames in Russian Parliament Voter Lists by Type. . . . . . .33
3.2 Distribution of Jewish Surnames Derived from Toponyms in the Kingdom of Poland . . .35
3.3 Distribution of Rural Jews in the Duchy of Warsaw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
4.1 Jewish Surnames Homonymic with Slavic Surnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
4.2 Distribution of Selected Surnames in Warsaw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
5.1 Polish Letters and Letter Combinations Interchangeable in Jewish Surnames. . . . . .53
A.1 Most Common Jewish Surnames in the Guberniyas of the Kingdom of Poland . . . . . . .58