Jewish and Eastern European last names
How Jewish family names were adopted, and why records need patience.
Most Ashkenazi Jewish families did not have fixed surnames until laws required them. In the Austrian Empire this happened under Joseph II in the 1780s, in the Russian Empire during the first half of the 1800s, and in Prussia in the early 1800s. Sephardic families, by contrast, often used family names much earlier.
Where the names came from
- Fathers' names: Abramson, Jacobson, Davidovich, Mendelssohn.
- Places: Warshawsky (Warsaw), Berliner, Posner, Rosenthal (rose valley, also a chosen ornamental name).
- Trades: Schneider, Kaufman (merchant), Zimmerman.
- Priestly lines: Cohen, Kahn, Katz (an abbreviation for kohen tzedek), and Levi, Levine for Levite families.
- Ornamental names: Goldberg, Silverstein, Rosen and many others, adopted by choice or assigned, in some cases for a fee.
Spelling
Names were written in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian or German, then in the Latin alphabet in America. A single name can be Kowalsky, Kovalski or Kowalski. Treat transliteration as a source of variants.
Research tips
Find the town of origin in naturalisation papers or passenger lists. Borders moved: a town in present-day Ukraine may have been in Poland, Austria-Hungary or Russia at the time. JewishGen is the main specialist resource, including its Family Finder and the Gazetteer for locating towns. Records may be found in the archives of the country now containing the town.