Shalom, this is about Jewish last names, Ginsburg, Goldberg, Shapiro, Collin. Where did they come from and why?
First of all, until about the 10th and 11th centuries, Jews were basically known as whatever their name was, the son or daughter, name of their father. So, my Hebrew name is Yonathan, my father was Shmuel, Yonathan then Shmuel and it happened to be a Collin, so Yonathan Shmuel.
But things had changed in the world, in the 10th and 11th centuries, first of all, cities were more prominent. It was no longer people had the ability to know who was somebody was simply by saying so and so son of so and it is all because maybe they had left the village and were now in the city. There were too many people and they had to figure out some other way to organize people and to identify them.
In addition, in the world of commerce, they have to have a more exact system of naming for business purposes. Now, what names of people have often time, Jews took the names of professions? So, the words Schneider, German name, the tailor for example or Hazengna, the canter. See that various names that people had by their occupations.
And sometimes, it will be like their lineage, for example, Kets is short of Kohayne Seddek ro Leevee will be a Levite, oftentimes people have their names like that. And then when it get to modern times, people would often changed their name, but not as just modern times in America because people were afraid that they would not get hired because they have Jewish sounding lat names.
My family name now is Ginsburg but it was Chartouk four generations ago because my great, great grandfather had five sons each one did not want to go in army and before computers, if you were the only son in your family, the rumor was you did not have to go surf so he gave each one of his son a different last name.
It is a wonderful local rabbi who wrote a great book on Jewish last names, small book which kind of gives you a lot of this information but it is really how the Jews got their names.
There is a funny story about this two, wiser Jew name Ferguson which is not a Jewish name, because Ferguson in Yiddish means ‘I forgot’ so a Jew and the guy who is in asylum said “What is your name?” and he get so nervous. This is an official. He was afraid he says, “Ferguson, Ferguson,” Gary Ferguson. Or the Yiddish guy whose name is Sam Ting which is a Chinese name. And so he said, “How did you get that name?” I was behind a Chinese guy and he said his name and I forgot my name, I am so nervous, I just said “Sam Ting” meaning same thing, he wrote down Sam Ting. Lot of stories like that—in many case Jews and their last names.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services