Naming practices among Ashkenazic Jews in the Netherlands may be a stumbling block for genealogists, but once understood may also help them in their search for ancestors. Since most ancestors of Dutch Ashkenazic Jews came from Germany, their naming practices have much in common with those of Central European Jews. Little has been written about naming practices among Jews. Hence, much of what I can tell you about this topic comes from my own experience as a genealogist. Four of my ancestors Nanette Eliasar Kiek (1773/80-1824), Simon Joseph Papegaij (1763-1813), Simon Heilbot (after 1687-1744/55) and Wolf Goldsmid (1658/59-1735), will serve as examples. Understanding naming practices helped me to identify their parents and grandparents.
First Names
Jews in the Netherlands and elsewhere often had more than one first name. They even could have as many as three: (1) a civil name, which appears in the official Dutch records; (2) a kinnui or “popular” name, by which Jews were known to their coreligionists and which appears in the Jewish records; and (3) a “ceremonial” name, which was used during prayer services and is mostly found in circumcision registers and on tombstones. Van Straten and Snel use the terms “call name” and “church name” for popular and ceremonial names, respectively. Eleazer Halevi calls them “secular” and “sacred” names, respectively.
For example, a man referred to as Levi in the civil records was usually known to his friends as Leib and could be called Yehuda on his tombstone. Sometimes the civil name is just a translation of the ceremonial name. Thus most men who called themselves Simon before the authorities will have the ceremonial name Shimon. But sometimes there are exceptions. The ceremonial name of one of my ancestors, Simon Joseph Papegaij, is not Shimon. At the publication of the banns in Amsterdam in 1790 he signed in Hebrew with Shimshon ben Yoseph. This raises the likelihood that Schoontje [daughter of] Simon, married to Jooseph Papegij, is Simon’s mother, because in the rabbinical marriage conditions of 1762 she appears as Shainele bat Shimshon. Apparently, Simon Joseph Papegaij was named after his maternal grandfather, Simon Frankfort, whose ceremonial name is also Shimshon.
In 1744 Simon Heilbot of Altona accompanied his son at the
publication of the banns in Amsterdam. The Heilbuts were one of the first Jewish
families to settle in Altona in the first half of the seventeenth century. Later
several members of the family moved to Amsterdam. I always suspected a
connection with the well-known Heilbut family of Altona and Hamburg, but proving
a link is not easy. I could not find a Simon Heilbut in Altona or Hamburg, where
most of the members of the community of Altona actually lived. One of the most
important sources for genealogical research in Altona and Hamburg in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the tombstone inscriptions of the
Jewish cemeteries in Altona and Ottensen, which have been published by Grunwald
in 1904. I found plenty of Heilbuts, but no Simon. A possible solution to the
problem came from the Jewish cemetery of Amsterdam at Muiderberg. Simon’s son,
Nathan, lies buried there and in the Hebrew list of burials he is called Netta
ben Simcha Heilbot. Hence the Hebrew ceremonial name of
Simon is Simcha and not Shimon, as one might have expected. Simcha is a
very rare name. Moreover, it is used for men as well as women. At the Jewish
cemetery in Altona, Grunwald found 4515 tombstone inscriptions dating from
before 1808. Only ten of the people whose tombstones he mentions carry the name
Simcha, five women and five men, less than three per thousand. Two of the men
carry the familyname Heilbut and a third is a father-in-law of a Heilbut. I suspect, that all Simcha Heilbuts, including my ancestor, are
descendants of Simcha ben Moshe Yitschak Hamel (died 1687), the father-in-law of Joseph
Heilbut.
In the previous examples, there is some resemblance between the
ceremonial and civil name. This need not always be the case. The ceremonial name
of Nanette
Eliasar Kiek
appears on her tombstone: Elkele. This helped me to identify her parents, because Elkele is not a very
common name. I suspected that Lazarus
Israels and Lea Levi are her parents. The name of Lazarus’ mother is Elkele
Moses Goldsmith. This raises the likelihood that Lazarus is Nanette’s
father.
Middle Names
In the past, Dutch Ashkenazi Jews didn’t usually have middle names.
What may look to the English reader as a middle name is usually a patronymic.
Thus, Nanette Eliasar Kiek is the
daughter of Eliasar Kiek, while Simon Joseph Papegaij is a son of Joseph
Papegaij. But sometimes true middle names or composite first names do occur.
Rarely do these show up in the Dutch sources. These names often derive from the
custom of ‘changing’ the name of a person who is ill. Usually a new name is
added to the original first name instead of replacing it (Kaganoff 1977, p.
102). For example, the ceremonial name of Wolf Goldsmid, known from his
tombstone, is Yehuda Binyamin. He was given the ceremonial name Binyamin when he
was born, while the name Yehuda was added at some later time, presumably when he
was seriously ill. His full name is Yehuda Benyamin ben Moshe Shimon
Halevi. Thus, his father also has a middle name. This helped me to identify
Wolf’s father. When he registered for his marriage in Amsterdam in 1678, Wolf
Goldsmid claimed to have been born in Kassel, Germany, nineteen years earlier.
This raises the likelihood that the Court Jew Simon Goldschmidt of Kassel
(buried October 3, 1658), whose ceremonial name is Moshe Shimon
ben Baruch levi, is Wolf’s father.
People who were seriously ill more than once, may have undergone this process more than once (Luria 1861/62, folio 21). The ceremonial name of Wolf’s grandfather, the Court Jew Benedict Goldschmidt (died Kassel 1642), Baruch Daniel Shmuel [ben Moshe Yehuda?] Halevi, is known from the Memorbuch of the German town of Fulda. His popular name is Shmuel Stuckert. This suggests that the names Baruch and Daniel were probably acquired during two previous illnesses. These composite ceremonial names should not be confused with the names of fathers and grandfathers, which are often added as middle names in civil names. Ignoring these naming practives, a site on the internet has made Daniel Shmu’el the father of Baruch! More likely, Baruch is the son of Moshe Yehuda, as the text of one of the oldest, but unfortunately broken, tombstones at the Jewish cemetery of Kassel at Bettenhausen reads.
Family Names
Family names are rarely mentioned in civil records before 1811. This
does not mean that Ashkenazic Jews did not have family names before that time.
In The Hague in 1811, 35 per cent (139 out of 399) of the heads of families
declared that they wished to retain their family name (van Creveld 1989, p. 83).
However, most of these family names were probably popular names, which are
rarely mentioned in the civil records before 1811.
An
example of a popular family name is Kiek. The origin of the family name Kiek is
not known. Maybe it is a housename in Hamburg. The popularity of the
nineteenth-century photographer J. D. Kiek among students in Leiden has turned
this familyname into a standard Dutch word for snapshot. The ancestor of all
Dutch Jewish Kieks is Israel Abraham Lazarus (c. 1710-1800). He never
used the name Kiek before the Dutch authorities. But the Jewish records don’t
reveal his family name either. He is simply mentioned as Yisrael ben Avraham ben Eliezer. However,
the name can be found on the tombstones of his sisters and cousins in Hamburg (Schellekens
forthcoming). In 1811, the popular familyname Kiek, was only adopted as the
official familyname by one branch of the family. Another branch, to which
belongs the Dutch Jewish painter Jozef Israels, adopted a new name and called
themselves Israels, after their ancestor Israel Abraham Lazarus (Elema 1996).
Occasionally,
Jews had two family names, a civil one and a popular one. Thus, Wolf Goldsmid
occurs in Jewish sources as Wolf Kassel, his native town and the
name he gave his to house in Amsterdam. His descendants who moved to England in
1765 still carry the name Goldsmid (Hyamson 1953).
Care
must be taken with names of the parents of older people on death certificates in
the first decades of the nineteenth century. These deaths were usually
registered by the deceased’s children, who often did not remember their
grandparents’ names. Some may have attempted to convert popular names into
civil names. When Nanette Eliasar Kiek died in 1824, she was registered
by her husband as the daughter of Helena Carolina instead of Lea Levi.
He did not know the family name or patronymic of Nanette’s mother, who had
died long before in 1784. Moreover the double name Helena Carolina is very
unusual. Jewish women and most Jewish men didn’t have double first names in
those days. Perhaps her husband couldn’t remember whether his mother-in-law
was called Helena or Carolina. Her name was probably Helena, because women
called Leah often used Helena as their civil name. So where did he get the name
Carolina from? Nanette’s only daughter was called Carolina and he may have
thought that she was named after her maternal grandmother.
Elema, Petronella J. C., “Genealogie Israel(s):
Groningen,” Gens Nostra 51 (1996), blz. 105-28.
Grunwald, Max, Hamburgs deutsche Juden bis zur
Auflösing
der Driegemeinden 1811 (Hamburg:
Alfred Janssen, 1904).
Hyamson,
Albert M. “An Anglo-Jewish family”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical
Society of England XVII (1953), pp. 1-10.
Kaganoff,
Benzion C., A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History (New York,
1977).
ha-Levi,
Eleazar, “Jewish naming convention in Angevin England,” unpublished paper.
Luria, Shlomo, Yam shel Shlomo, Masechet
Gittin (“Solomon’s Water Basin, Divorce Tractate,” Ch. 4 (Stettin,
1861/62).
Schellekens,
J. J., “De eerste generaties Kiek in Hamburg,” forthcoming in Gens Nostra.
Van
Creveld, I. B., De Verdwenen Buurt: Drie Eeuwen Centrum van Joods Den Haag (“The
Neighborhood That Vanished: A Center of Jewish Den Haag,” Zutphen, 1989).
Van
Straten, Jits, and Harmen Snel, An Inventarisation of Asjkenazi and Matching
Civil First Names between 1669 and 1850 (Meppel, 1996).