Hebraization of surnames

The Hebraization of surnames (also spelled Hebraicization) (Hebrew: עברות‎, Ivrut, "Hebraization") is the act of adopting a Hebrew surname. For many diaspora Jews who migrated to the Land of Israel, taking a Hebrew surname was a way to erase remnants of their diaspora experience and to assimilate into a new shared identity as Palestinian Jews (Jewish residents of Ottoman Palestine and Mandatory Palestine) and later as Israeli Jews (Jewish citizens of the independent State of Israel.)

This phenomenon was especially common among Ashkenazi Jews, because many such families only acquired permanent surnames (rather than patronyms) when surnames were made compulsory by the November 12, 1787 decree by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II. By way of contrast, Sephardi Jews from the Iberian peninsula often had hereditary family names since well before the Spanish Expulsion (e.g., Cordovero, Abrabanel, Shaltiel, de Leon, Alcalai, Toledano,...) Very few Hebrew surnames exist, such as Cohen (priest), Moss (Moses) and Levi (Levite). Names ending with -berg, -stein or -man are often thought of as Jewish, but are of German origin, while suffixes such as -sky and -vitz are Slavic. Similarly, a few Hebrew surnames, such as Katz, Bogoraz, Ohl and Pak are in fact Hebrew acronyms, even though they sound and are often perceived as being of foreign origin (in these cases, from German, Russian, Polish and Korean, respectively).

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