Jewish Last Name Generator

Four traditions in one Jewish last name generator

Most Jews in Central and Eastern Europe had no fixed surnames until governments demanded them. The Habsburg emperor Joseph II ordered Jews to take German family names in 1787, and Prussia and the Russian Empire passed similar laws in the early 1800s. That is why so many Ashkenazi names are German or Yiddish: Rosenberg means rose mountain, Goldstein gold stone and Schneider tailor. Others point to a town of origin, such as Horowitz from Hořovice in Bohemia or Shapiro from Speyer on the Rhine.

Sephardi surnames are older and trace back to medieval Spain and Portugal. After the expulsions of 1492 and 1497, families such as Abravanel, Toledano, Benveniste and Pinto settled in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Amsterdam. Mizrahi Jews from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen often carry Arabic or Aramaic names like Sasson, or Dayan, which means judge, and Mizrahi itself, which simply means eastern. The generator mixes all four traditions, and the starting letter and length filters help you narrow a long list quickly.

Kohen, Levi and names from religious roles

Some of the oldest Jewish surnames record a hereditary religious status rather than a place or a trade. Descendants of Aaron, the kohanim, often carry Cohen, Kohn, Kahn, Cohan or Katz. Katz is an abbreviation of kohen tzedek, meaning righteous priest. The Levites, who assisted in the Temple, gave rise to Levi, Levy, Levin, Levine and Segal, which is usually explained as an abbreviation of segan leviyyah, assistant of the Levites. Kaplan, the German word for chaplain, is also common among families of priestly descent.

Patronymic and matronymic names form another large group. Mendelsohn means son of Mendel, Abramovitz son of Abraham, and Rivkin comes from the mother's name Rivka. Acronyms were popular in rabbinic families: Schatz stands for sheliach tzibbur, the prayer leader. Look at the Hebrew script beside each result as well. It shows how the name is spelled in Israel, and it often reveals the original meaning more clearly than the European spelling, which was filtered through German, Polish or Russian clerks.

Using it as a Hebrew last name generator

After 1948 many Israelis replaced their diaspora surnames with Hebrew ones, a practice encouraged by early leaders. David Ben-Gurion was born David Grün, Golda Meir changed Meyerson to Meir, and Shimon Peres began life as Szymon Perski. New Hebrew surnames were often short words from nature or the Bible: Tal means dew, Oren pine tree, Barak lightning and Shamir a hard stone or thorn. Others echoed the sound of the old name, as when Ehud Brog became Ehud Barak.

When you choose a name for a character, match it to the family's path. A Holocaust survivor in 1950s Brooklyn would likely keep Weiss or Feldman, while an Israeli-born grandchild might be Shalev or Amit. A Moroccan Israeli family might be Ohayon, Azoulay or Elbaz, and a Baghdadi Jewish family Kadoorie or Shashoua. For a real baby the surname is normally inherited, but the meanings here are useful if your family is considering a Hebrew surname after moving to Israel.