Jewish Family Names & Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary

Jewish family names are 'chronicles written in code,' as one historian put it, and reflect the history of the Jewish people, from the world of the Biblical patriarchs through the many countries and languages of the Diaspora, to the newly Hebraized setting of present-day Israel.Despite their antiquity, most names of Biblical origin can be fairly easily identified; strangely enough, however, names of later periods are much more difficult to explain. Through historical research and linguistic analysis, these names too can be deciphered.This dictionary is the most complete compilation of its kind in English, containing over 70,000 family names, from the common to the exotic, for nearly every Jewish group: Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Oriental and modern Israeli. If an Ashkenazic or Sephardic name in current use is miising, the reader will likely find it under a related name of similar origin.For the record, currently used family names are included even when their origins cannot be established.