Surnames of Jewish People in the Land of Israel from the Sixteenth Century to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper outlines a study of surnames used by various Jewish groups in the Land of Israel for Ashkenazic Jews, prior to the First Aliyah (1881), and for Sephardic and Oriental Jews up to the end of the 1930s. For the 16th–18th centuries, the surnames of Jews who lived in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron can be mainly extracted from the rabbinic literature. For the 19th century, by far the richest collection is provided by the materials of the censuses organized by Moses Montefiore (1839–1875). For the turn of the 20th century, data for several additional censuses are available, while for the 1930s, we have access to the voter registration lists of Sephardic and Oriental Jews of Jerusalem, Safed, and Haifa. All these major sources were used in this paper to address the following questions: the use or non-use of hereditary family names in various Jewish groups, the geographic roots of Jews that composed the Yishuv, as well as the existence of families continuously present in the Land of Israel for many generations.

1. Introduction

No study of surnames used by Jews who lived in the territory of the Land of Israel before the creation of the State of Israel has been published until now. However, this information allows us to analyze the presence in that territory of Jews deriving from various diaspora centers. It also permits us to see whether the presence of families was continuous or discontinuous and the geographic distribution of communities inside of the Land of Israel at various periods. This information also allows us to follow the naming practices of various Jewish groups. This article addresses all these topics. Section 2 presents a synthesis about the demographic figures collected by other researchers, with a focus on the regions of origin of these Jews and the geography of the Yishuv. Other sections directly address the onomastic questions formulated above in this paragraph using the demographic data of Section 2 to corroborate certain ideas. For Ashkenazic Jews, this article considers only the period before the First Aliyah (1881). For Jews of other origins, the period of consideration is extended up to the creation of the State of Israel (1948).

2. Demographic Figures

During the second half of the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela provided the following estimates for the number of Jews in various places of the Land of Israel visited by him (from north to south): 50 in Alma, 200 in Acre, 50 in Tiberias, 200 in Caesaria, 300 in Ramla, 200 in Jerusalem, and 240 in Ashkelon (in which 40 are Karaites) (Adler 1907, pp. 19–29). In 1481, Rabbi Meshullam of Volterra noted the presence of about 250 Jewish families in Jerusalem and 50 in Gaza (Mešullam da Volterra 1989, pp. 75, 70). For Jerusalem, he indicated that the community members originated in Iraq, Aleppo, Gaza, Damascus, Cairo, and some other places. In 1488, Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (Italy) referred to 67 Jewish families in Jerusalem (out of a total of about 4000 families living there), some of which were temporarily converted to Catholicism in the past, 22 Jewish families in Hebron (of which about one half also went through a temporarily conversion), and the presence of Jews in Gaza.1 During the next decades, some Jewish exiles expelled from Spain and southern Italy eventually settled in the Land of Israel. They were mainly coming from Salonica and settling in cities, while the rural Jewish population of the Land of Israel was composed of local Arabic-speaking (musta‘riba) Jews (David 1999a, pp. 4, 16). Rabbi Moses Basola noted in 1521–1522, that is, already after the Ottoman conquest of the area (1517), the presence of only two large Jewish communities, both comprising about 300 households: Jerusalem (of which fifteen were Ashkenazic, all others being Sephardic, Maghrebi, or musta‘riba) and Safed (with three synagogues: Sephardic, Maghrebi, and musta‘riba) (David 1999b, pp. 61–62, 82).

Turkish tax documents of the 16th century provide the number of Jewish households for various places. Among them, only a few exceed fifty at some moment: Jerusalem (199 households in 1525/26, 224 circa 1538, 324 in 1553/54, 237 in 1562/63),2 Pekiin (33 in 1525/26, 54 in 1533/34, 45 in 1572/73), Kafr Kanna (west to Tiberias, 50 in 1525/26, 52 in 1533/34, 77 in 1572/73), Gaza (95 in 1525/26 [among which 31 are from the Maghrebi, 7 “Frankish,”3 and 2 Syrian families], 98 in 1538/39, 115 in 1548/1549, 81 in 1556/57, and 73 in 1596/1597), and Nablus (71 in 1538/39 [among which three are from the Maghrebi, five “Frankish,” and one from Kurdistan], 36 in 1548/49, and 15 in 1596/97).4 Safed was the largest Jewish center, with 233 households in 1525/26 (among which 131 were musta‘riba, 21 Portuguese, 48 “Frankish,” and 33 Maghrebi Jews), 719 in 1555/56, 945 in 1567/68, and 976 in 1596/97.5 The following table shows the list of congregations present in Safed all linked to the geographic origins of their members (Cohen and Lewis 1978, p. 161; Lewis 1952, p. 6).

Table 1. Jewish congregations in mid-16th-century Safed.

Congregation Name	Area of Origin Concerned	1555/1556	1567/1568
Qurṭuba	Córdoba (Spain)	35 (7)	53 (2)
Sabîliya	Seville (Spain)	67 (4)	160
Qastilia	Castile (Spain)	181 (12)	200
Araḡûn ma‘a Qatalân	Aragon and Catalan (Spain)	51 (3)	72
Pûrtuqal	Portugal	143 (18)	200
Pûlya	Apulia (Italy)	21 (1)	25
Qalâwriya	Calabria (Italy)	24	20
Ṭâliyân	Italy	29	35
Musta‘riba	Arabic speakers from Middle East	98 (10)	70
Maḡâriba	Maghreb	38 (7)	52 (3)
Macâr	Hungary	12	15
Alâmân	Germany	20 (1)	43 (7)

presents the number of households and, in the parentheses, the number of bachelors.

The numerical superiority of Sephardic Jews in Safed is explicitly stated in Responsa by Rabbi Moses Trani (1574) (David 2013, p. 45*). Because of the importance, both demographic and intellectual, of the Sephardic migrants in the cities of the Land of Israel during the 16th century and their continuous contacts with other Ottoman communities, local Arabic-speaking Jews (musta‘riba) gradually adopted Judeo-Spanish and other elements of the Sephardic culture (Levy 1994, p. 64; Morag Talmon 1992, p. 471). In the early 1570s, a Provençal Yeshiva sponsored by Joseph Caro was created in Safed. Many members of the Provençal congregation likely migrated to Safed from the Avignon area after the decree expelling local Jews promulgated in April 1569.6 The congregation was still extant in 1637.7

During the last quarter of the 17th century, when most famous local sages passed away, while others left Safed following a significant deterioration of its economic situation (closely related to the decline of the local textile industry), the size of its Jewish congregation diminished (Emmanuel 1935, pp. 55–57; David 1999a, p. 99; 2013, pp. 51*–54*). The Jewish presence in the Land of Israel declined significantly during the 17th century in comparison to the previous century, with Jerusalem being already the main Jewish center of the area during the second half of the century.8 Since at least the second half of the 16th century and the whole 17th century, Jews present in that city were divided in two communities only: Ashkenazim and “Sephardim” (the last one covering all non-Ashkenazic groups).9

The arrival in 1700 in Jerusalem of hundreds of poor Jews from Eastern and Central Europe led by the Polish Jewish preacher Judah Hasid provoked a large economic and social crisis that ended in 1720 by the burning by creditors of the Ashkenazic court and its synagogue and the dispersion of the entire Ashkenazic community of the city.10 During the 18th century, the Jewish population was mainly concentrated in five cities: (1) Jerusalem: about 1000 persons in 1709 and 5000 in 1770; (2) Safed: some 200 households in 1730, but only 40–50 families in 1765; (3) Hebron: circa 40 households in 1700, 200 persons in 1743, and 300 persons in 1782; (4) Acre: 100 households in 1742; and (5) Tiberias: 12 families in 1726, but over 150 households in 1769 (Barnai 1992, pp. 173–77).

During the 17th–18th centuries, the Portuguese community of Amsterdam collected money to support poor “Portuguese” (that is, ex-Converso) Jewish families prompted to emigrate from the Netherlands. Some of them were presumed to go to the Ottoman Empire.

Table 2. Number of poor “Portuguese” families receiving money to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire.

Destination	1598–1639	1640–1669	1670–1699	1700–1729	1730–1759
Land of Israel	27	12	46	63	7
Other parts of the Levant + southeastern Europe	2	3	78	93	14

presents the number of families concerned:

The Land of Israel (and, more precisely, Jerusalem) was their main destination during the first two thirds of the 17th century.11

During the 19th century, the first censuses of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel organized by Sir Moses Montefiore recorded the number of persons appearing in

Table 3. Number of Jews in the Montefiore censuses (1839–1875).

Place	1839	1849	1855	1866	1875
Jerusalem	2916	4523	4533	5799	11,237
Safed	1384	1858	2060 a	3567	3753
Tiberias	801	1165	1461	2082	1552
Hebron	419	346	519	509	939
Jaffa	86	264	254	538	660
Haifa	138	no data	151	14	531
Acre	248	281	188	no data	no data
Nablus (Shechem)	75	84	59	64	no data
Shfaram	106	118	114	no data	no data
Pekiin	no data	75	63	60	no data
Ramla	no data	8	97	no data	no data
TOTAL	6173	8722	9499	12,633	18,672

^a This figure covers Safed and other places in Upper Galilee.

.12

Table 4. Distribution by congregations in the Montefiore censuses.

Congregation	1839	1849	1855	1866	1875
Sephardic	4392 (2425 J, 768 S, 320 T, 247 H)	4684 (3060 J, 839 S, 554 T, 231 H)	4513 (2649 J, 718 S, 661 T, 249 H)	5338 (2796 J, 1229 S, 1033 T, 280 H)	8142 (6000 J, no data S, 1161 T, 450 H)
Ashkenazic	1772 (491 J, 612 S, 476 T, 172 H)	2917 (1172 J, 11,019 S, 611 T, 115 H)	4063 (1651 J, 1342 S, 800 T, 270 H)	5943 (2313 J, 2338 S, 1049 T, 229 H)	9690 (5057 J, 3753 S, 391 (partial) T, 489 H)
Maghrebi	no data	291 (J)	233 (J)	690 (J)	no data
Georgian	no data	no data	no data	no data	180
no indication	9	830	690	662	660
TOTAL	6173	8722	9499	12,633	18,672

presents the distribution by congregation, with details provided in parentheses for the four Jewish holy cities: Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron (abbreviated as J, S, T, and H, respectively).

One can observe that the number of Ashkenazic Jews exceeded that of Sephardic Jews already in 1866. Between 1881 and 1939, with the influx of Jews (First-Fifth Aliyahs) coming mainly from Eastern Europe, but since 1933 also from Central Europe, the proportion of Ashkenazic Jews increased significantly. At the turn of the 20th century, Yemenite Jews were also migrating to the Land of Israel. Morag Talmon (1992, p. 472) provided the following figures for the size of the Sephardic congregations in Jerusalem: 11,750 in 1890, 16,000 in 1900, 20,000 in 1910, and 13,446 in 1916. According to her (p. 476), in 1918, in the Land of Israel there lived about 11,000 Sephardic, 4400 Yemenite, 33,000 Ashkenazic, and 7600 other Jews (most likely Middle Eastern and Maghrebi ones).

3. Surnames before the 19th Century

For Jews who lived in the Land of Israel before the 16th century, hereditary surnames were rather exceptional. In the Middle Ages, surnames were not used yet in the area. No source listing the names of local Arabic-speaking (musta‘riba) Jews is available. However, there is little chance that these Jews used hereditary family names as no such tradition was established for non-Jews of the same area, while for Middle Eastern Jews from neighboring Syria, surnames started to be used during the last third of the 18th century only. A few Ashkenazic scholars present in the Land of Israel at the turn of the 16th century tended not to have surnames either. For these reasons, the earliest sources showing surnames used in the Land of Israel date from the 16th century and correspond to recent non-Ashkenazic migrants to that area.13

Rabbinical writings refer to more than sixty surnames of Jews, mainly rabbis, who lived in Safed during the 16th century.14 The largest group encompasses scholars bearing typical Sephardic surnames such as Abulafia, Albotene, Alcabeṣ, *Alshekh (אלשיך), Ben Ezra, Benveniste, Besudo, *Calay (קלעי), Caro, Cordovero, Curiel, Dato, Falcon, Galante, Guedelha, de Leiria, Najara, Oliveira, de la Reina, Sagues, Ṣahalon, Sarug, Surujon, and de Vidas. Many of them were Jewish exiles from the Iberian Peninsula (who originally settled in southeastern Europe) or their descendants. Some others were “Portuguese” Jews who went through a period of conversion to Christianity. This origin is explicitly stated in the available documents for bearers of the surnames Oliveira, Guedelha, Ḥazan, and *Pudniro(?) (פודנירו), and is particularly plausible for Cordovero, de Leiria, de la Reina, and Sagues.15 The group of Jews from various regions of Italy (including Sicily) was rather large, for example, Colon, Gallico, Luzzato, Miscian, Tivoli, Trabut, and Vital. The names of Maghrebi scholars—such as Azulay, Bensusan, Ben Tebul, Halewa, and Ohana—represent the third group. Jews from other areas—such as Maurogonato from Crete and Luria (of Ashkenazic paternal ancestry)—were marginal. Iscandari derived from the Arabic name of Alexandria could be a rare representative of musta‘riba Jews. Moses Galante, the appointed head of the newly created Provençal Yeshiva in Safed (the early 1570s), originated from Rome. Yet, as indicated in the previous section, several other members of the Provençal congregation are likely to have migrated to Safed from the Avignon area after the expulsion of local Jews (1569). One of them appears in a letter compiled in Safed in 1575 as Israel *Yarḥi (ירחי). The odds are high that he was the same individual as Ysrael de Lunel listed among the Jews embarking a ship in Marseille to go to the Levant in 1569.16 The list of signatories of a letter sent in 1637 by the same congregation includes the following names: Galante, Cohen, Ṣarfati, *Carmi (כרמי), *Caspi (כספי), *Baze (באזלה), and *de Lattes (די לאטאש) (Schwarzfuchs 1991, p. 159). For the last three surnames, we find their equivalents in the same ship embarking list from Marseille.17 Carmi represents a Hebraicized form of Cremieu, a name commonly present in the Avignon area since at least the first third of the 16th century.18 Ṣarfati was originally a Hebrew nickname for migrants from northern France.

In 16th-century Jerusalem, we find representatives of the same groups but in smaller numbers in comparison to Safed. Sephardic names—Abzaradiel, Alascar, Albotene, Almosnino, Attia, Ben Habib, Calay, Castro, Marhaim, Masud, Nahmias, Pizanti, de Vidas, and Zacuto—dominate.19 Only the Ashkenazic surname Bak represents Italy. Bensusan and Cohen Solal came from the Maghreb. Ankari (ענקרי) is also likely to be of Maghrebi origin. Ben Sayah (בן צייאח), Cohen *Shabi (שבי), and Shekhemi (שכמי) could be musta‘riba Jews.

During the 17th century, certain “Portuguese” Jews settled in Jerusalem. Jacob Tirado (died in 1612), the founder of the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, was one of them. As discussed in the previous section, “Portuguese” communities of Amsterdam and, to a lesser extent, Livorno played an important role in the Jewish life, both economic and (since the end of the 17th century) spiritual life of the Land of Israel. In the lists of families of Jerusalem, Safed, and Hebron that received financial support from Amsterdam during the first third of the 18th century, we find numerous migrants bearing surnames which were typical of “Portuguese” congregations, such as Abarbanel Soza, Aboab Osorio, Almeyda, Bueno Mesquita, Corea, Crespo, da Cuña, Fernandes Medina, Gabay Henriques, Gomez Patto, Lopes Nunes, Lopes Pereira, de Morales, de Oliveyra, and da Silva. Only in a few exceptional cases do the names of the receivers of support betray non-“Portuguese” Jews: Abadi (typical for Syrian Jews), Satrit, and Sermati (both commonly found in the Maghreb in the forms of Chetrit and Zermati, respectively).20

For the 18th century, we know the surnames of about 150 other Jews who lived in Jerusalem.21 Their origins are rather heterogenous: bearers of Ashkenazic surnames Rokeach, Luzzatto (both from Amsterdam, but originally, from Poland and Italy, respectively), Jaffe, Horowitz (from Belorussia), Katzenellenbogen, Mintz (from Hungary), and Rappaport (from Izmir); Treves (also from Izmir though the surname originated in France and was common in Italy); Jews from Italy bearing the surnames Gallico, Rovigo, Segre, and Sanguinetti; bearers of surnames that originated in Italy but became gradually widespread in the Ottoman Empire, such as de Botton (from Istanbul), Salmona, Trinki, and Finci; Moroccan migrants Ayash, Ben Attar, Maymaran, and Toledano; Abadi and Diwan (from Aleppo); Mizrahi (a name typical for Middle Eastern Jews); Sharabi from Yemen; descendants of “Portuguese” Jews Carregal, de Curiel, Rosanes (from Istanbul), Munion, Musafia, Serano, Valero, and de Velasco; and bearers of names typical for Sephardic exiles such as Abulafia (from Izmir), Alcalay, Alhadef (from Rhodes), Altaras, Amarillo (from Trikala), Asael, Aseo, Ben Forado, Ben Sanchi, Benveniste, Berab, Caldero, Camondo, Covo, Danon, de Mayo (from Salonica), Pardo (from Venice), Pizanti (from Istanbul), and Samanon (from Salonica). For both Algazi and Ḥazan, we know from historical sources that their bearers came to Jerusalem from Izmir. In tombstone inscriptions from the 1790s we can see references to Jews from Georgia: Anukashvili and Moshiashvili, both based on Hebrew male given names (Hanuka and Moshe, respectively) and ending in the Georgian patronymic suffix -shvili (შვილი), meaning ‘child of’.

4. Montefiore Censuses

The earliest representative lists of Jews living in the Land of Israel date from the 19th century only. They correspond to the Montefiore censuses (1839–1875).

Table 5. Number of persons without surnames in the Montefiore censuses.

Congregation	1839	1849	1855	1866	1875
Ashkenazic	1550 of 1772	2676 of 2917	3659 of 4063	5162 of 5943	7941 of 9690
Sephardic	305 of 4392	402 of 4684	183 of 4513	103 of 5338	999 of 8142

presents the number of persons who appear in the census data without surnames.22

From this table, one can observe that during the period in question, Ashkenazic Jews were mainly ignoring the official surnames they received at the turn of the 19th century after the promulgation of laws forcing them to adopt hereditary family names. They followed the traditional Jewish naming pattern appearing in the census names with their given names and patronymics only. Among those who used other types of names, one can distinguish several groups. The first group encompasses western Ashkenazim. In 1849, all 48 members of the German congregation had surnames. In 1866, only 6 out of 65 members of the Dutch–German congregation are listed without surnames, while in 1875, all 87 members of the same congregation appear with surnames. Among the examples are Fribourg from Lorraine, Goldschmid and Hess from Amsterdam, Halberstadt, Lilienthal, Rosenthal, Rumpf, and Schnattich from various German cities, Hahn from Moravia, *Oplatke (אפלאטקי), and Steinberg from Bohemia. The second group includes names drawn from toponyms from Eastern Europe. Some of them end in the Yiddish suffix -er designating inhabitants of various places: Baltineshter, Benderer, Sener, Shidlover, Mez(e)richer, and Zagrer. Others were formed without adding any suffix: Amdur, Aniksht, Delatyn, Kosev, Mez(e)rich, Salant, Sniatyn, Telenesht, Tysmenitz, and Zablotow. In principle, any of these names could be either a hereditary surname or a personal nickname based on the name of the place from which the bearer came to the Land of Israel. The last possibility is surely valid in cases when the last name of the person is based on his place of origin that is also explicitly indicated in the census data, for example: Barlad from the city of Bîrlad (Romania), Tomaszower from Tomaszów (Poland), Dokshits from Dokshitsy (Belorussia), Molyev from the city of Mogilev (whose Yiddish name is Molev), Chernobyler from Chernobyl (Ukraine), *Kolmier (קאלמיער) and *Ibertyn (איברטין) from the Galician towns of Kołomyja and Obertyn, respectively, and *Veblov (וועבלוו) from the Lithuanian city of Virbalis, called Verbelove in Yiddish. Two examples are also known for western Ashkenazim: Bamberger from Bamberg and Prag from Prague. The third, the largest, group covers about 450 surnames of Jews from Eastern Europe. Some of these names correspond to famous rabbinical dynasties: Auerbach, Epstein, Frenkel, Ginzburg, Heilprin, Heller, Horowitz, Landau, Lurie, Margulis, Mintz, and Yoffe. However, the large majority of names are those adopted at the turn of the 19th century only, for example: Bergman, Berlin(er), Binder, Blattner, Blumenfeld, Drapkin, Engel, Eisenberg, Eisenstein, Eisler, Falk, Feinstein, Finkelstein, Fradkin, Frumkin, and Glikin.

Surnames were rather unusual for the congregations formed in Jerusalem by Jewish migrants from Georgia. In the census data of 1875, 111 of 189 members of the Georgian congregation of Jerusalem have only a given name and patronymics. For others, we can discern only a few different names, including *Batia, *Binia, *Eligula, *Kundia, *Mardakhia, *Mizrahi *Papia, *Zutia, *Krikhel,23 *Levi, *Pichkhadze, *Ajami (עג’אמי), *Mizrahi, and *Gurji. The last three names are not real surnames; they represent nicknames meaning ‘Persian’, ‘Oriental’, and ‘Georgian’, respectively, that are unlikely to be inherited. None of them are known in Georgia. *Mizrahi and *Gurji are by far the most common last names in the Georgian congregation of Jerusalem, with twenty-six and twelve bearers, respectively.

The situation is totally different for Maghrebi Jews. For them, the numbers of persons listed without surnames are: 15 (thirteen widows and two orphans) of 291 persons in 1849, just 1 man of 233 persons in 1855, and none in 1866. In other words, during the 19th century for all Jews of Maghrebi origin, the use of hereditary family names was already a strongly established tradition. By far, the largest group came from the western Maghreb, that is, Morocco and the Oran area of Algeria.24 Among them we find, for example, bearers of such surnames as Abecassis, Abergel, Abbu, Abutbul, Abujdid, Aflalo, Amsallem, Asayagh, Asulin, Azulay, Ben Harosh, Benhamu, Benkiki, Bohbot, Buzaglo, Darmon, Elankri, Elkaim, Elmaleh, Hadida, Ibghi, Malka, Moyal, Ohana, Ohayon, Sananes, Shetrit, Waknin, and Yayon. The number of migrants from the eastern Maghreb (the Constantine area of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli) is significantly smaller. Among the examples are Alush, Betito, Bismut, Hajaj, Jarmon, Serusi, Shemama, and Tayeb. The proportion of Jews born in the Maghreb was particularly high in Safed and Tiberias. In Safed, we find about 450 families with surnames with the birthplaces of the family heads known that are distributed in the following way: about 230 Maghrebi, about 160 Ashkenazic, about 30 Syrian, and a similar number of Sephardic from various parts of the Ottoman Empire. For almost 300 migrant families with surnames in Tiberias, the distribution is as follows: more than 180 Maghrebi Jews, about 50 Syrians, about 25 of Ashkenazim, and a similar number of various Ottoman Sephardim. In Jerusalem, their presence was important as well. For almost 1500 migrant families with surnames, the distribution is as follows: about 300 Maghrebi Jews, a similar number of Ashkenazim, about 60 Syrians, but almost 800 various Ottoman Sephardim. Multiple surnames brought to the Land of Israel from the Maghreb are of ultimate Iberian origin, for examples: Akrish, Bar Sheshet, Biton, Carsenti, Corcos, Elnekave, Shulal, and Toledano.

As can be seen from Table 5, in Sephardic congregations, the proportion of people listed without a surname is bigger than in the Maghrebi community. Yet, it is still quite small in comparison to Ashkenazic congregations.25 We can presume that the families in question had either Middle Eastern (musta‘riba) or Romaniote roots. The latter origin is particularly plausible for Jews listed with the “surname” Bekhar (בכר).26 For people appearing with actual surnames, these surnames mainly reveal the provenance of their paternal ancestors from medieval Iberia, for examples: Abravanel, Afumado, Akrish, Alajem, Albaranes, Alfandari, Almosnino, Amarillo, Ben Susan, Ben Yakar, Biton, de Calo, Camhi, Corcos, Crespin, Danon, Esforno, Mursiano, Nahon, Negrin, Pardo, Sasportas, Surujon, Taragano, and Zamero. Some other names reveal the “Portuguese” ancestry: Belilios, Coronel, Fernandes, Ferera, Mendes, Miranda, Paredes, Sarabia, Silvera, and Sotto. Among surnames implying roots from Sicily, southern, or central Italy are Adato, Anav, Augustari, de Botton, Capuano, Chimino, Matalon, Perahia, Piperno, Recanati, Salerno, Sonino, Talbi, Taranto, Varsano, and Ventura. A few names—such as Aksioti, Maurogonato, and Politi— reveal Romaniote ancestry. For all names from the above categories, the census data often indicate the immediate provenance from various other Ottoman provinces or—only for some bearers of surnames typical for Spanish exiles—their birth in the Maghreb. A group of surnames of Syrian origin includes, among others, Abadi, Abudi, Ades, Arazi, Dwek, Ḥamawi, Ḥemsi, Jamus, Katri, Laḥam, Manobla, Sethon, Shabot, Shama, Shweke, Stetie, and Turkie. Their bearers are often listed with Damascus or Aleppo indicated as their birthplace. Iraqi origin is rare: Agha Baba (born in Baghdad), Ḥuṣin (חוצין, from Baghdad), and Khabash (born in India).

Only for a very few surnames can we conjecture their inception in the Land of Israel since we do not find any reference to them in other countries: *Bendoli (בינדולי, בן דולי), *Eshḥadi (אשחאדי, אישחאדי), and *Shaḥrur (שחרור). Several reasons can be proposed to explain why their number is so small. As discussed above, during centuries that preceded the Montefiore censuses, the Jewish population of the Land of Israel was dramatically unstable, with major communities that were temporarily ceasing to exist (as it was the case for those of Safed and Tiberias in the 17th century) and a regular influx of new migrants and outflow of Jewish inhabitants to other areas. Non-Ashkenazic migrants were usually coming already with fixed surnames. Ashkenazic migrants from Eastern Europe either had no surnames, or, at least, they were ignoring surnames assigned to them following laws promulgated by Christian authorities at the turn of the 19th century. Before the 20th century, in the Land of Israel nothing was prompting Ashkenazic settlers to acquire new surnames. Surnames were not a part of their traditional naming patterns, while Middle Eastern non-Jews, including Arabs and Turks, were not using surnames either. No official regulation forced any inhabitant of the area in question to acquire a fixed family name. Similar factors were valid for local musta‘riba Jews. On the one hand, we can conjecture that they represented the majority among the members of Sephardic congregations listed without surnames. On the other hand, we have no evidence that the same musta‘riba families were living in the Land of Israel without interruption. At some periods, they were able to migrate to the territories of modern Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq merging with local Arabic-speaking Jews.

Certain Jews born in neighboring provinces of the Middle East are listed in the censuses with their last name drawn from the Arabic name of their native city or area by the addition of the Arabic demonymic suffix –(âw)i or -li (of Turkish origin): Antebi from Anteb (today, Gaziantep, Turkey), (al-)Basrawi from Basra (Iraq), (al-)Ḥalabi from Aleppo, *Dimashki (דמשקי) from Damascus, Kurdi from Iraqi Kurdistan, and Urfali from Urfa (today, Şanlıurfa, Turkey). In such cases, the last name more likely represents a personal nickname rather than a family name.

Data present in the Montefiore censuses allow the discontinuity of the presence of certain families in the Land of Israel to be illustrated. Multiple names appear in sources from the 16th to 18th centuries either just once or during short periods. None of them appear in documents from the 19th century Land of Israel. Among them are Albotene, Amigo, Avzaradel, Besudo, Castro, Cohen Tanuji, Egozi, Feruz, Goyozo, de Lattes, Lonzano, Parente, Samanon, and numerous “Portuguese” surnames, including Abarbanel Soza, Abendana, Aboab Osorio, Bueno Mesquita, Cohen Azevedo, Barboza, Cardozo, Crespo, da Cuña, Delcampo, Goimerans, Gomes Patto, de Lima, Mesias, Milano, de Morales, Munion, Nunes, de Oliveira, Serano, da Silva, Tirado, and de Velasco.

No continuity can be observed for Ashkenazic families. As discussed in the first section of this article, the presence of Ashkenazim was irregular before the 19th century. Moreover, even during the 19th century, surnames were marginal for this group. As a result, examples of the same surname found in sources dating from different centuries are exceptional and limited to a very few surnames used by rabbinical dynasties. Spiro (or Spira, Shapiro, and Shapira, שפירא in Hebrew sources) is one of them. One bearer of this name was an emissary from Jerusalem in 1655. Bearers appearing in the Montefiore censuses were born in various provinces of the Russian Empire or Austrian Galicia.

For dozens of non-Ashkenazic surnames appearing in the Montefiore census data, we find references, usually in Jerusalem or Safed, dating from the 16th to 18th centuries. However, almost without exception, these surnames have bearers referred to in the 19th century as born outside of the Land of Israel, often in the same countries from which migrants with the same names came during the previous centuries. If we just take names starting with A-, then such a situation is valid for Aboab, Alazraki, Alfandari, Algranati, Alkalay, Almosnino, Altaras, Amar, Amarillo, Angel, Arditi, Arie, Ariel, Asael, Aseo, and Atias (all with bearers born in the territories of modern Turkey, Greece, and/or Bulgaria), Abadi from Syria, Abdala from Iraq, Abutbul, Ayash, and Azulay (born in Morocco). For these names, we have direct evidence about different branches of their bearers coming to the Land of Israel at different periods.27

The name Azulay can be taken to illustrate this phenomenon in more detail. During the 1580s, Mesod Azulay, a migrant from the Maghreb, was one of the rabbis living in Safed. At the end of the same century, Abraham ben Mordecai Azulay, a Moroccan rabbi, born in Fez, migrated to Hebron, where he died in 1643. Yehuda Zeraḥia ben Moses Azulay, another Moroccan rabbi, born in Marrakesh, moved to Jerusalem in 1812. The Montefiore census data show the presence of multiple other families whose heads migrated from the western Maghreb between 1830 and 1863; the data show at least two different from Marrakesh, and at least four different from each of the following cities: Meknes, Oran, and Tetouan.

Data that would show a continuous presence in the Land of Israel of generations of the same family are rarely available. The branch descending from Abraham ben Mordecai Azulay represents one of the exceptions. From texts written by his scions, we know that his famous great-great-grandson, Haim Joseph David ben Isaac Azulay (1724–1806), was born in Jerusalem, the city where both his father and grandfather lived too. During the last decades of his life, he dwelled in the Maghreb and Italy, died in Livorno, but at least some of his descendants continued living in the Land of Israel. For example, his grandson Nissim Zeraḥia ben Abraham Azulay was killed in Safed during the earthquake of 1837 (Gaon 1937, pp. 27–36). Consequently, for this branch, seven generations lived in the Land of Israel between the turn of the 17th century and the 1830s.

The case of Abulafia is quite similar. On the one hand, we have direct evidence about the arrival in the Land of Israel at various periods of members of different branches of this Sephardic family. Jacob ben Haim Abulafia was a rabbi in Safed during the second half of the 16th century before moving to Tiberias at the end of the century. In the Montefiore census data, we find references to several families whose heads moved to Jerusalem from the territories of modern western Turkey and northern Greece. During the first third of the 20th century, David ben Eliahu Abulafia, born in Gelibolu (Turkey), migrated to Jerusalem. On the other hand, rabbinic sources kept traces of several generations of descendants of Jacob ben Haim Abulafia who lived in Tiberias, Hebron, and Jerusalem. The rabbinical authority Haim ben Jacob (circa 1660–1744) was apparently his great-grandson. After being a rabbi of Smyrna, he returned to the Land of Israel and played an active part in the restoration of the Jewish community of Tiberias. Haim Nissim Abulafia (circa 1800–1861), the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, was a direct descendant of Haim ben Jacob. Isaac, the son of Haim Nissim, died in 1910 in Tiberias (Gaon 1937, pp. 4–15; Barnai 1992, p. 149).

5. End of the 19th Century and the First Half of the 20th Century

With the mass Aliyah of Jews from Eastern Europe that started during the 1880s, the corpus of surnames used by Jews in the Land of Israel changed dramatically. These newcomers brought surnames mainly based on German, Yiddish, Slavic languages, and Hebrew that were acquired at the turn of the 19th century in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, Kingdom of Poland, or the Habsburg Empire (primarily in Galicia). During the 1930s, the mass arrival of German Jews in the Mandate Palestine provided another layer. Consideration of all these Ashkenazic names is beyond the scope of this study.

For non-Ashkenazic Jews, the general characteristics of their corpus of surnames can be analyzed using information contained in the censuses of Jerusalem conducted for the Turkish government. The census of 1890 recorded the names of several thousand Jewish males belonging to various Jewish congregations of the city, including the Ashkenazic ones.28 About 2400 of the persons listed appear with surnames. Among 190 non-Ashkenazic Jews whose native place is known, 122 were born in Yemen, 17 in Bulgaria, 15 in the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus, 13 in the territory of modern Greece (among them, 10 in the Thessalian cities of Larissa and Trikala), and 10 in Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia).29 The presence of numerous Yemenite Jews is one of the main idiosyncrasies of this census: migrants from Yemen are exceptional in earlier sources for the Land of Israel. Names revealing the Yemeni provenance appear also for dozens of persons whose place of birth is not indicated. In total, the census refers to about 70 different Yemenite surnames. Many of them are based on Yemenite toponyms: Arusi, Baydani, Busani, Dahari, Dahbani, Damari, Damti, Ḥajbi, Ḥamdi, Ḥazi, Raḥabi, Rosabi, Sayani, Sharabi, Sharafi, and Ukashi. Since for almost all of them we also find references in Yemen,30 these surnames in Jerusalem could be migrated ready-made forms. However, we cannot formally exclude a possibility that some of the above names were not hereditary in Yemen yet, being just personal nicknames revealing the places of origin of their bearers. For another large group, we can be almost sure that they were already hereditary in Yemen: Asbaṭ, Daḥbash, Gartah, Ḥibshush, Jizfan, Magilah, Qalazan, Ṣarum, and Ṣefirah. Several names are based on occupations: Ḥaddad ‘ironsmith’, Naddaf ‘cotton carder’, and Tabib ‘physician’. At least, Naddaf, known as a Yemenite surname in multiple other documents, was not formed in Jerusalem based on the profession of the migrant; the name was brought to the Land of Israel as a ready-made surname. For last names coinciding with male given names used in Yemen, the situation is the most ambiguous, for example: Efraim, Giyat, Ḥasan, Jemal, Maḥbub, and Saliḥ. In theory, any of them could be a surname, or the second given name of the person listed in the census, or the given name of his father. A similar difficulty exists for the name Yamani, meaning ‘(one) from Yemen’, in Arabic. On the one hand, it was already used in Yemen as both a family name and a male given name. It could come to Jerusalem as a ready-made surname, or be a given name of the father, or a nickname applied already in the Land of Israel for a person coming from Yemen.

The population registration made in 1910 was led by the Council of the Sephardi and Oriental Communities of Jerusalem. It covered 2204 non-Ashkenazic families listing, in Hebrew, their surnames, given names of family heads along with their places and years of birth, as well as occupations. In total, 119 persons are listed without family names. For 163 of the remaining 2085 persons, their birthplace is not indicated. About two thirds were born in the Land of Israel (almost all in Jerusalem). Among 120 persons coming from the territory of modern Greece, more than one half (63) were born in the city of Larissa. In total, 29 originated from Salonica, 11 from Trikala, and 10 from Ioannina (of which 4 are listed without surnames). Groups of persons born in other areas encompassed 77 in Monastir (of which 13 are without surnames), 52 in Bulgaria (including 30 from Sofia, of which 6 are without surnames, and 7 from Plovdiv, of which 3 are without surnames), 46 in Iraq (among them 30 are from Baghdad, of which 6 have no surnames, 9 from Mosul, of which 5 are without surnames), 43 in Yemen (more than one half of them are from Sanaa), 32 in the territory of modern Turkey (among them, 10 are from Istanbul, 6 from Aydin, 5 from Izmir, and 4 from Urfa; all four of them bearers of the last name Urfali that, for them, likely represents a toponymic nickname rather than a hereditary surname), 31 in Syria (26 from Aleppo and 5 from Damascus), and 9 in Egypt.31

In the two censuses in question, we find references to Jews from the Caucasus and Central Asia. The largest group was from Georgia. In 1890, we find not only several names known from the Montefiore census of 1875 (Batia, Eligula, Gurji), but also Ajiashvili, Benia and Beniashvili, Davarashvili, Janashvili, Jinjikhashvili, Nanikashvili, and Shabtoshvili. At the turn of the 20th century, we also find in various documents from Jerusalem references to Khakhiashvili, Khikhinashili, and Topchiashvili. Sherbet ben Nisim Anisimov, a rabbi from Dagestan, came to Jerusalem already in 1865. His last name represents a Russified form based on the given name of his father, Nisim. Jews from Bukhara regularly appear in the Land of Israel (almost exclusively in Jerusalem), starting with the end of the 19th century. To this group most likely belong Isakharoff and Kashayoff, appearing in the census of 1890. For Aminoff, Musayoff, Pinhasoff, Shalomayoff, and Sufiyoff, their Bukharan origin is indicated explicitly in sources of the last decade of the 19th century. The ending -off in these surnames represents a Germanized spelling of the Russian possessive suffix -ev (Cyrillic eв, for forms ending in -yoff) or -ov (Cyrillic oв, for others). For both Mountain Jews from Dagestan and Bukharan Jews, their surnames were assigned only after the corresponding areas were annexed by the Russian Empire. Most often, as for Georgian Jews, their surnames are based on male given names.

Sources from the last twenty years that preceded the creation of the state of Israel allow us to observe the composition of non-Ashkenazic communities of the Land of Israel and the surnames of new non-Ashkenazic migrants.

The list of voters for the Sephardic congregation of Jerusalem (1939) covers more than 1.100 persons (Tagger and Kerem 2006, pp. 218–27). For 615 of them, their surnames allow us to identify the geographic origin of ancestors: Middle Eastern names cover more than 40 percent, Sephardic names about 40 percent, Maghrebi names about 7 percent, and surnames from Italy (including Sicily) about 4 percent. The list of voters for the Sephardic congregation of Safed (1934) covers 139 persons (Tagger and Kerem 2006, p. 238). In that list, bearers of surnames originally brought from the Maghreb continue to represent the largest category (almost 50 clearly bear them), though their dominance is not as distinct as it was in the Montefiore censuses. More than 30 persons bear names typical of Middle Eastern Jews, but two thirds of them are covered by a single name, Mizrahi. More than 50 persons have names that do not reveal the geographic origin of their ancestors: Cohen, Levi, and several names coinciding with male given names (Asher, Nahum, Nissan, Peres, Ruben). Surnames typical of Sephardic Jews in the narrow sense—that is, revealing ancestors that were either Jewish exiles from Iberia or the “Portuguese” Jews—are a small minority. The assignment to that category is doubtless for Amarillo and Pinto that were common in various provinces of the Ottoman Empire. About 150 different surnames appear in the voter list for the Sephardic community of Haifa compiled in 1939 (Tagger and Kerem 2006, pp. 212–13). They are distributed almost evenly between three groups: Maghrebi, Middle Eastern, and Sephardic.

Table 6. Presence of names in voter lists (1930s) and the Montefiore censuses.

City	Voter List			Montefiore Censuses
	Year	Number of Surnames	Percentage Present in Montefiore Censuses	Number of Surnames	Percentage Present in the Voter List
Jerusalem	1939	360	65	1,366	27
Safed	1934	57	65	308	12
Haifa	1939	173	21	127	31

compares names present in the Sephardic voter lists of Jerusalem, Safed, and Haifa to the data of the Montefiore censuses for non-Ashkenazic communities for the same three cities. This information allows us to evaluate the stability of local communities.

We can observe that, on the one hand, in both Jerusalem and Haifa, about one third of surnames used in the mid-19th century were still present in the same cities during the 1930s. In Safed, this percentage is significantly smaller. In theory, in all places, these figures may be relatively small not only because of families that left them, but also since voter lists could be less representative than the censuses. On the other hand, in both Jerusalem and Safed, about two thirds of surnames known in 1939 were already known in the same cities in the mid-19th century. In Haifa, this percentage is much smaller. In other words, Haifa received the largest number of new settlers and Safed lost the largest portion of settlers already present. These indicators can be explained by the economic development of Haifa during the first decades of the 20th century and apparently the decline in the importance of Safed.

6. Conclusions

In this article, it was shown that the presence of various Jewish families in the Land of Israel was mainly discontinuous. This rule is not absolute; exceptions to it do exist. Various Jewish groups that constituted the Yishuv during the 19th century did not follow the same naming practices. Ottoman Jewish migrants with the Sephardic ancestry, those from the Maghreb, and Ashkenazim from Western Europe, regularly used surnames. The same is true for Syrian Jews, though their sample is too small to make statistical conclusions. The situation is quite different for Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe and Georgian Jews; they mainly appear without surnames, while in that period all Jews of the Russian and Habsburg Empire already had official surnames. This fact shows that these surnames were marginal for the consciousness of the Jews in question, being not an integral part of their culture yet. It also appears that the inception of a very few surnames took place in the Land of Israel. The members of the Yishuv using surnames mainly brought these names as ready-made forms from the areas from which they moved to the Land of Israel.