This is an appreciably enlarged and thoroughly revised version, translated into German, of the authors’ Jewish Family Names and Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary (USA, 1992). Additions include names, variants, explanations and citations. There are many more Oriental names, including for the first time Ethiopian (Falasha) names. From A’Barbanell to Zywot there are many thousands of names listed, bewildering in their diversity and permutations. Every stage of the dispersion of the Jewish people is reflected, every vicissitude, humiliation, persecution, and genocidal atrocity. Names from Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino predominate, alongside their exotic variants in all the languages of Europe (and many of Asia, Africa and the USA). It is clear that many of these names were born of often desperate attempts to strike roots in new homelands.
The wealth of data facilitates study, particularly, of the fascinating, very different onomastic histories of the two great branches of the Jews of Europe: the Ashkenazim of the north and the Sephardim of the lands around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Key aspects of these histories, the main types of names (for example Ersatznamen and Tiernamen), their countless variants, their orthography, and their origins are discussed and exemplified in the erudite introduction. This is a model of scholarship, and indispensable for full understanding of how Jewish names came into being and how they achieved such extraordinary efflorescence. The bibliography is limited to 60 works spanning several centuries, from 1657 to 1994. The rubric “Alphabets” illustrates some of the special Roman letters used in Polish, Czech, Romanian and Turkish; and the systems of transliteration used by the authors for the Cyrillic alphabet and for the alphabets of Arabic‐Farsi, Hebrew, Georgian, and Amharic.
The dictionary of names is clearly printed in two‐column format, listing names alphabetically. These entry names are in bold, as are names within the entries when known to be in present‐day use. Most entry names are then given in their Hebrew form, followed by geographical origin, linguistic source, meaning(s), and (in profusion) derivatives and variant forms. The greater one’s knowledge of languages and of linguistic processes the greater one’s benefit from and enjoyment of this stunningly erudite and endlessly fascinating product of long years of study and meticulous research.
The Guggenheimer team has created a guide to Jewish family names which is certainly near‐definitive, in its scope and depth. A conscientious reviewer needs to consider virtues and blemishes. Here virtues overwhelm faults and omissions. Exhaustively reviewing the surnames of my many Jewish friends and acquaintances, and seeking them out in the dictionary, brought growing admiration at its comprehensiveness and the remarkable thoroughness of the coverage of variants. The only absentees noted, either as to name or to variant, were few indeed: Dolsky, Goldstucker, Hansbach/Hanspach, Kaczer, Linka, and Masheder.
This German‐language edition is a considerable improvement on the US edition of 1992. Specialist libraries holding that earlier work need to add this new, refined version, despite its daunting price. Other libraries may be perfectly content with the more readily accessible English‐language text, which will meet most lay needs in this esoteric and demanding area of genealogy.
