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Some people use CJSI to determine if a surname is Jewish.
The fact that you find a surname in this index does not
necessarily mean that a given surname is Jewish. This occurs
for three major reasons:
- Jews and non-Jews share surnames.
The third most common Jewish surname in the United States
(after Cohen and Levy) is Miller. Clearly Miller in both
non-Jewish and Jewish.
- Intermarriage and conversion. The
fact that the surname McGraw appears in a Jewish burial database
means someone named McGraw is buried in a Jewish cemetery.
That does not make it a Jewish surname. Similarly, the Family
Tree of the Jewish People is a database of family trees developed
by Jewish genealogists. But it would also include non-Jewish
branches of families.
- Nature of database. Some of the databases
named are predominantly Jewish
but do contain non-Jewish individuals. An example is the
Russian Consular Records database of people who transacted
business with the czarist consulates in the United States.
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