Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition. 2 vols, by Alexander Beider. Avotaynu, 2008. $118.00.

To order:  http://www.avotaynu.com/books/DJSRE2.htm

When the first edition of Alexander Beider’s massive Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire came out in 1993, it was hailed in genealogical circles as one of the most important books ever printed about Jewish surnames. His subsequent compilations of Jewish surnames from Poland, Galicia, and other regions have only solidified his reputation as a foremost authority in the field.

Beider recently revised and updated the Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, a Herculean task that took four years. The revised edition has just been published by Avotaynu. At 1,000 pages in hard cover, it’s nearly 50 per cent larger than the original. The original work has about 50,000 surname entries, the new and improved version about 74,000.

Beider considered the revision necessary because of the explosion of new sources and knowledge that has occurred over the last 15 years due to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and the publication of numerous related new works. He altered hundreds of entries, expanded the work’s geographical range, and added many new cross-references.

The Moscow-born statistician, linguist, and onomastician, who has lived in Paris since 1990, is credited with almost single-handedly revolutionizing the field of Jewish onomastics. Most previous researchers had rehashed names and ideas from the published literature with little scientific method or regard to where the names occurred geographically.

One of Beider’s central methodological principles was to link surnames to the geographical regions in which they originated, and he was the first to do a comprehensive inductive survey of surnames based exclusively on primary sources such as old voters’ lists, censuses, civil records,                             and other archival material.

Browsing through the Dictionary reminds us how often our surnames contain capsulized references to our ancestral past. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries when Russian Jews were obliged to adopt surnames, many took names of patronymic or matronymic origin–derived from a father’s or mother’s name, respectively, usually in obeisance to traditional Hebrew naming customs. Such names include Meyerovitz (son of Meyer), Davidovitz (son of David), and Gitlin (from the female name Gitl).

The many surnames inspired by occupations offer glimpses of an outmoded village way of life. The name Bodgas, for instance, means “bathhouse” (from German). Similarly, Cherednyak is “cattle shepherd” (Belarusian), Drach is “hand mill” (Yiddish), Fajnshrajber is “calligrapher”(Yiddish), Gitelmakher is “cap maker” (Yiddish), Goren is “forging furnace” (Ukrainian), Katsov is “butcher” (Hebrew), Latkemakher is “maker of pancakes” (Yiddish), Milkhiker is “dairyman” (German), Pakhter is “leaseholder” (Yiddish), Plytnik is “raft driver” (Belarusian), Shkolnik is “beadle, sexton in a synagogue” (Belarusian), and Torgovets is “tradesman” (Russian).

Surnames derived from place names, or toponyms, also are common. The name Bobrushkin is linked to the town of Bobrujsk, for instance, just as Drubicher is linked to Drubich, Gordon to Grodno, Mogilevich to Mogilev, Polyakov to Polyak, Slobodkin to Slobodka, Usyshkin to the Usyskin River in Gorodok district. (Many such surnames refer to small villages that are difficult or impossible to find on a map; for help in locating them, see Where Once We Walked, by Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Sack.)

When surnames became mandatory, many Jews took—or more likely were given—monickers based on nicknames, such as Begun (quick walker), Brodavka (wart), and Dolgoshiya (long-necked). There is a small but well-documented category of “ridiculous” surnames included in the broader category of “descriptive” or “artificial” surnames that seem generally based on personal characteristics or pleasant associations. One pictures disdainful bureaucrats holding their noses as they assign laughable and even disrespectful last names to the poor Jewish applicants summoned to appear before them. Beider notes in his book that most surnames from the Russian Empire were assigned by the Jewish community itself.

Other surname categories in the Dictionary include names of Kohenite or Levitic origin, rabbinical names, and names from regions outside of the compass of the book. Surprises occur on every page, such as the link between the famous name of Chagall to the name Segal, a Kohenite acronym of Hebrew origin dating back to the 11th century.

A statistician by training—he holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Moscow—Beider compiles statistical charts whenever possible, such as his quantitative tables of the most common Jewish surnames in 12 provinces and other regions of the Russian Empire. Based on 1912 data, the most common names in Vitebsk region are: Kagan, Levin, Gurevich, Ginzburg, Ioffe, Rabinovich, Sverdlov, Rapoport, Shapiro, and Livshits. A comparable list for Grodno shows Kaplan, Levin, Lev, Epshtejn, Kagan, Goldberg, Fridman, Shapiro, Rabinovich, and Vajnshtejn.

Despite the high reliance on mathematics, the science of Jewish surnames can never be exact because overlapping layers of meaning and language inevitably lead to ambiguous derivations. Beider’s forthright discussions of such ambiguities are enlightening. One must applaud his unfailing fidelity to the facts and his refusal to alter them to fit theoretical constructs.

In rare instances, readers may discover an alternate meaning that has apparently been overlooked. Might not the above-mentioned Goren, for instance, also refer to the Hebrew noun for “threshing floor”? And no mention is made of the connection between the name Bogdan-(ovich) and the Slavic “gift of God,” making the name akin to Theodore, Dorothy, and the Hebrew-based Jonathan, Nathaniel, and Netanyahu.

The Dictionary includes an introductory section, roughly 200 pages in length, that illuminates many aspects of the hitherto dark process of how Jews acquired their family names. These opening chapters discuss the history of Jewish names in Eastern Europe, their types, morphology and linguistic aspects, the patterns of their adoption, the overlap of Jewish and Gentile surnames, and the author’s scientific approach. Encyclopedic in tone, densely written, and highly technical, this material will satisfy and probably fascinate those seeking to understand how, when, and why our surnames derived in the Russian territory once known as the Pale of Settlement.

Those who wish merely to look up the etymology of a surname should turn directly to the Dictionary of Surnames, which takes up the remaining 800 pages of the book. (A smaller softcover volume accompanies the Dictionary and provides an invaluable Soundex listing of all the surnames within, so the correct entry may be found no matter how the name is spelled.)

Before doing so, however, it’s best to have some basic knowledge about the surname one is curious about. It’s important to know, for example, that the name Chambers was once Cherkofsky, Pearson was once Persovsky, or Yarmouth was once Yarmolinsky. Many of our old-fashioned monickers did not survive the Holocaust or the process of immigration to the New World and the dual cultural influences of anglicization and Americanization.

Students of Jewish genealogy may want their own copies of A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, Revised Edition for home use; others may be content to consult it in a synagogue or reference library, along with Beider’s other titles. No major genealogical library should be without them.

Bill Gladstone