14th November 1934

What's in a name? - Emil Israel - of Jewish origin?

Answers from the internet

David, John, Reuben, Rachel, Sarah, Naomi, Ruth - & many, many others - are Jewish names which have been adopted by non-Jews. Some are common, some are rare. Any Biblical name can be, & in most cases has been, used by Christians.

When surnames were adopted, it was quite common to use a father’s personal name plus ‘son’ - & sometimes the ‘son’ was omitted.

It’s possible that your ancestors were Jewish, or converts, but the name by itself doesn’t prove anything.

I have never come across anyone with the surname “Israel” who was not Jewish, but that does not mean they do not exist. Your ancestors may have converted a long time ago, or perhaps they never were Jewish in the first place.

Having a surname like that in the Nazi era would certainly have been a red flag and you can be sure someone would have researched your family tree if the family was in Germany at that time. If your family was left alone by the Nazis, it can only be because any Jewish ancestors you may have are far back enough to be free of the restrictions imposed by the Nuremberg laws.

All of the people I know (including some of my own ancestors!) who have the last name of Israel are Jews. Unfortunately, many Jews were forcibly converted and horrifyingly some even chose to become Christians (although a Jew is always a Jew). I know a family who changed their surname to Israel after the father converted to Judaism, based on a line in the Tanach (Jewish Bible) about people changing their name to Israel. Also, there is a Christian teaching that CHristians are the new ISrael, so I guess it is possible that Christians would take on the name Israel to emphasize that belief.

I am understanding from your question that your ancestors went by that name in the early 1800s but not in the 1930s-1940s, when such a name would have landed them in the round-up bringing them to slaughter. So if they were indeed Jews in the early 1800s, they may have unfortunately become Christians. Benjamin D’Israeli is the best known example of this: Israel in his name, but sadly the family ‘converted’ to Christianity to have rights and social mobility.

A word such as Israel, was given to the 3rd patriarch of the Israelite people; that is Jacob. One of Jacob's sons was called Judah. Judah is the father of the Jewish people. The two terms became synonymous, after the Babylonian return to the land that God had given to Abraham, the 1st patriarch, and his sons forever. So generally speaking Israel and Jew imply the same culture, but such only developed with the passage of time, especially the disappearance of 'the 10 lost tribes'. These tribes never disappeared. Instead they were assimilated into the main Israelite body, Judah's tribe.

Interestingly enough, early Christianity, as a body referred to itself as the "true House of Israel". And so it is not impossible to have the name that preceded Judah, and have no Jewish past whatsoever. But such is highly unlikely. As I pointed out "generally speaking Israel and Jew imply the same culture", but remember that the exception is what verifies a rule.

Odds that some male was Jewish are high. It’s difficult to conceive of a surname Israel that isn’t Jewish. There is a chance the name was something close to Israel and switched, perhaps someone who worked with iron - Eisenhower - but that’s a stretch. It’s doubly a stretch because a) Jews were often mis-treated, as in locked in behind gates at night and sometimes massacred, and b) Jewish last names started to appear in Germany around that time because the authorities demanded they stop with the ‘son of’ stuff. Odds that someone would choose a Jewish last name while not Jewish are really low.I’ll add some detail. My name is often considered Jewish but nearly all the people with it are Lutheran and, who knows, we all may come from the same person at some point in time. The name came to me from my grandfather Kostya (Koss) Kurtzman, who was from Kiev. (As an aside, I did not know his name until I was cleaning out my grandmother’s apartment after her death and I discovered their citizenship papers. The people I knew as Kenneth and Jean were actually Kostya and Sonya. I have his wallet and every piece of ID in it says Koss. And her name was typed as Joan (!) but I guess she preferred Jean.) I know literally nothing about my family tree on my father’s father’s side. On his mother’s side, I have my great-great-grandfather’s passport which says his last name was Racowicki (or Rackowicz, etc.). The family name is Rackoff, but the passport was issued under Polish control so Polish spelling. And the first name is something we’ve never seen. I mention this because names can change. An example, my mother’s mother’s family name became Weine but was Wanger which my uncle believes was a corruption of a descriptive for Hungarian, that they were from Magyar. Since Weine is recent, it doesn’t refer to ‘wine merchant’. In my opinion, it’s probably more like Wagner, something having to do with carts because people used carts a lot.Some of his ideas are clever reaches. Example: he traced the other last name Gelfand - which is elephant, like in Oliphant as well - to Hamburg and he thinks it may mean they lived near the zoo but I think it’s more likely a name rooted in Olaf, which refers to heritage and thus son of your heritage. This idea connects at a Jewish humor level: elephant is about memory and so is Olaf so it’s a play on heritage. It actually converts the ‘son of’ naming convention into a memory of the naming convention.A name like Schwartz is typically taken to mean dark hair or complexion but, since dark hair is common, it could also be - and more likely is, IMO - an oblique reference to a group of people who trace their origins perhaps toward Spain and other places where Jews were expelled. It could also refer to an occupation, but I think it’s more likely a preservation of that memory. That means they were generally ‘darker’ not that they were really dark-skinned, dark-haired but that they belonged in memory to that group which appeared. A physically descriptive name that makes sense is Roth and other versions of ‘red’ because, being a redhead, I know they’re relatively rare and pass down through families, so that also has a ‘tribal’ memory quality.Since Jewish last names were generally chosen, humor and oblique references are part of them. You miss that if you just read the bare descriptions. And you especially miss the extreme importance of cultural memory, which is true in all cultures and is powerful among Jews. A name like Reichman or Rich could mean they were poor: if you were picking a name and were poor, that’s a pretty good choice and a good joke. My last name probably means something like advisor or lawyer, not ‘short’ as in stature but short of tongue, as in Kurt or Conrad, so the name preserves a memory or tradition - or aspiration - as well. But for all we know, the name might have been like naming a Great Dane ‘Tiny’. There are some offensive last names and, to me, most of those indicate communal jokes - which often were dropped by later generations. We forget that some people were probably not well liked and others were not cooperative and others were weird as people are today. So someone named ‘fart’ may not have been cooperative or liked and descendants then either chose to live with the name or changed it. I don’t know why we have this idea that somehow Christian authorities lined up Jews and said ‘your last name is now Goldberg or Rosenberg’. They generally avoided dealing with the Jewish community, which suggests the communities decided and gave a list to the authorities. I picked Goldberg and Rosenberg because those are considered highly Jewish names except they are typical Christian German names as well - so I doubt Christian authorities would ‘share’ or assign their own last names to Jews. One of the highest ranking Nazis executed at Nuremberg was Alfred Rosenberg. Not Jewish.Since I can’t end with that reference, consider Norman Jewison. His last name says ‘son of a Jew’. Except they’re not Jewish. The choice of the name Israel is a blunt identification with Jewish tradition, so I have to believe it was a Jewish choice.

Ashkenazi Jews had no surbanes until the European Enlightenment enfranchised them politically as well as with civic status. Concurrently in Germany in particular the Reform movement was established. Its chief aim was to ease & speed Assimilation. To many if not most of these Jews it involved a conversion to the Lutheran Church. That said, if a Jew did so they would tend to try and hide their Jewish roots. Having "Israel" as a surname would tend to point to the opposite conclusion though.

Israel comes from the Hebrew Yisra’el and far predates anything European.

As a surname it began with the Jews so its oretty likly you have Jewish ancestors at some point in history. Im sure over time peoole with that name left the Jewish faith at times and chose other faiths. It happens as people marry and move about. Some apparently became Lutherans.

Israel is the name God gave to Jacob, that’s why Eretz Israel, or “Land of Israel/Jacob”. Since Christians adopted a part of Jewish Torah as the Old Testament, many Jewish names were incorporated into Christian culture. For example, John (Yohanan), Rafael (Rafa’el), Gabriel (Gavri’el), etc, all are Hebrew names, from characters of the Torah that also became part of the Bible. So, no, Israel is not an exclusively Jewish name.