Furthermore, you can have innumerable combinations of names, including siblings with different surnames entirely, as long as the family names existed within the recent genealogy of the family. What’s important is that New Christian surnames are indistinguishable from non-Jewish, Old Christian surnames because they are the same. Some pre-expulsion surnames include:Ībarbanel, Abensur, Aboab, Almosnino, Alsheikh, Altaras, Amarillo, Barzilay, Benaroya, Benatar, Benbassat, Bendalec, Ben Ghiat, Bensousan, Benveniste, Faraggi, Franco, Haleva, Herrera, Marcos, Nahmias, Palache, Pardo, Pesso, Policar, Saporta, Saltiel, Senior, Sion, Toledano, Valensi, Zacuto These surnames could be toponyms (names related to the place), Arabic names, occupations, Hebrew names, and more. There are two main categories of surnames: So, to return to the original question, “What is a Sephardic Surname?” Famous surnames like Abarbanel, Benveniste, Zacuto, ibn Yahya, and Palache could be found amongst Iberian Jews in the centuries preceding the persecutions, Expulsion, and forced conversion. Jews in the Peninsula, like Catholics and Muslims, took to this new tradition readily and thus, the tradition of familial surnames predated the end of Iberian Jewry. In the Iberian peninsula, surnames began being used in the 10th century CE, reaching popular usage by the 15th century. Unlike most other Jewish communities, surnames have a longstanding usage and tradition amongst Sephardic Jews. This does not necessarily include other Jewish populations who follow Sephardic traditions and approaches to Jewish law and identify as Sephardim/pan-Sephardim as well, who do not have a genealogical connection. For the purposes of this series, I will be using the term Sephardic, exclusively meaning those with a genealogical tie to expulsees and conversos/New Christians, as well as those who joined later on. So, what is a ‘Sephardic surname’? To put it simply, it is any surname used by someone in the Sephardic community. #Spanish last names series#With this series on Sephardic genealogy and history, I hope to shed some light and encourage people to ask questions about the past in order to better understand the present and future. Unfortunately, because of lists like that, myths perpetuated by heritage tourism (“Jews forced to convert took the names of fruit trees, Catholic themes, and plants in order to ‘hide’” being one such popular legend routinely sold by tour guides and books in Spain and Portugal), and, quite frankly, inadequate teaching about the history of Sephardic Jewry, a lot of confusion exists today about Sephardic genealogy and history. In genealogy, history, anthropology, and archaeology, it is always critical to ask questions of the sources you are reading, even if it is a primary source. Furthermore, not all of the surnames he indexed even belonged to Jews or were in exclusive use by Jews. However, there was one slight issue: that list was fraudulent and a poor copy of indexing work done by the late Harry Stein, who didn’t claim that all of the surnames he indexed were belonging to Sephardic families just that the books he consulted on Sephardic genealogy and history, had some kind of reference to the surname. Problem solved, right? “Was my ancestor Sephardic?” could be answered by this expert list, stating conclusively that your family’s surname had belonged to known Sephardic communities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |