Pleasant Are Their Names: Jewish Names in the Sephardic Diaspora. Bethesda, Md.: University Press of Maryland, 2010, $35.00

Professor Aaron Demsky, editor of this new book focusing on Jewish names in the Sephardic diaspora, serves as director of Bar-Ilan University’s Project for the Study of Jewish Names and has edited five anthologies on the subject.¹ His latest book, Pleasant Are Their Names, is the 19th volume in the University of Maryland’s respected academic series Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture. The anthology includes ten articles by invited authors on topics in Sephardic onomastics.

Professor Moshe Orfali sets the stage in the first article with a brief, but detailed, account of the communities of the Sephardic diaspora after 1492 and their literary and cultural achievements.

Alexander Beider, noted author of several books on Russian and Eastern European onomastics, reviews previously published books on Sephardic names.² Approaching the subject from a linguist’s viewpoint, he offers excellent constructive and useful criticism on methodology and/or name classification systems for not adhering to modern scientific etymological principals which would make future onomastic studies adhere to modern linguistic standards. In their defense, early authors³ approached the topic from a family history, rather than linguistic perspective, and without benefit of modern linguistic principles. Beider proposes a set of principles to guide future onomastic studies in adherence to modern linguistic standards. Linguistic considerations aside, despite parallels between linguistic and family history objectives, the two approaches are not identical and much may be gained from both.⁴ Sephardic surnames often are so ancient that calque (translations of names into another language) variants in historical documents can inform name meanings and thus are an important tool in Sephardic onomastics, reducing the need for guesswork.

Mathilde Tagger briefly reviews the history of Bulgaria and its Jews, as well as previous name studies of Bulgarian Jews. In a careful analysis, she demonstrates how Bulgarian names mirror Bulgaria’s complex history. She differentiates between names of Bulgarian origin and names of Jews originating elsewhere (for example, France, Germany, Greece (Romaniote), Hungary, and Spain). Tagger’s extensive dictionary of Bulgarian Jewish names may be searched online at www.sephardicgen.com/databases/BulgarianSurnamesSrchFrm.html.

Shlomo Alboher discusses the possible meanings of names in Monastir (Bitola), Macedonia, in communal rec­ords and a census conducted by occupying Bulgarians during World War II. Demsky adds a classification of the names.

Victor Hayoun studies the names of the Tunisian Jewish Community of Nabeul, relying on previous studies for their etymologies and includes a family tree of the Haddad-Hayoun family.

Three articles discuss given names. Ora Rodrigue Schwarzwald examines feminine given names in the Sephardic world and the effects of fashion trends. Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky used divorce and halitza registers and Izmir gravestones to determine the ethnic composition of the community during the early 18th century to 1933. Gila Hadar examines women’s names in Salonika and illustrates how fashion moved names from Spanish or Portuguese to biblical names and finally to European and French names.

Tamar Alexander and Yaakov Bentolila discuss personal names in Hakitia (Moroccan Judeo-Spanish) proverbs, and Henry Abramovitch and Yoram Bilu discuss visitational dreams of Jewish saints used in choosing a baby’s name.

This book serves as a useful introduction to the field of Sephardic onomastics. While it does not attempt to cover all aspects of this vast field, it provides an excellent sampling of recent research in the field. Missing is a treatment of important differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi onomastics and how these distinctions may influence the methodology and tools used, especially the use of name translations in historical documents to elucidate the true meaning of old Sephardic names. For example, Sephardic Genealogy⁴ includes documents related to the sale of a house in Toledo in which the seller’s name in different official records of the same sale is used interchangeably in its Hebrew form, Abenmelec/Abenmeleq, with Aben Rey (Spanish) and Aben Maleque (Arabic)—clearly defining its meaning as king. A linguist might guess that the Sephardic surname Malka is Hebrew and therefore means queen, but notary records from pre-expulsion Aragon and Navarre⁵ reveal that the Sephardic surname Avimelca, Malka, Melque, and Ibn Rey similarly were used interchangeably, thus supporting Laredo’s statement of the etymology of Malka as Aramaic and not Hebrew. Laredo,⁶ who mentions one instance of the Malka surname in Monzon (Aragon) and gives its meaning as king, first alerted me to that possibility, and my subsequent research revealed several documents to support the hypothesis. Because many hereditary Sephardic surnames date back centuries, knowledge of verified name translations and variants is essential in Sephardic onomastics, without which family historians would be unable to follow Sephardic families through the centuries where these variants were commonly interchangeable. Laredo makes a point of carefully listing surname variants, though he is not always accurate in so doing.

Notes

1. Aaron Demsky, These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan Press, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, in press).
2. Books by Eisenbeth (Algeria), Laredo (Morocco), Toledano (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), Sebag (Tunisia), Taieb (North Africa), and Faigenboim, et al. (multiple countries).
3. Eisenbeth, published in 1936.
4. Jeffrey S. Malka, Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World. 2d ed. (Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2009).
5. The Malka family lived in Aragon and Navarre from the early 1200s to 1491.
6. Abraham Laredo, Les Noms des Juifs du Maroc (Madrid: Institut Montano, 1978).

Jeffrey S. Malka

 

Pictured above:  Aaron Demsky

Available from http://www.amazon.com/Pleasant-Are-Their-Names-University/dp/1934309249