«His goal was to assimilate Jews with non-Jews»
A Decree, a Donation and Four Questions on Jewish Surnames
The Jewish Museum of Switzerland has gratefully accepted a donation from the late Ruth Kornfeld of Zurich encompassing decrees, oaths, and proclamations from the 16th to the 19th centuries that address the legal status of Jews. Among them is a French decree from 1808 mandating Jews to adopt surnames. In an interview with museum director Dr. Naomi Lubrich, historian Dr. Johannes Czakai (Jerusalem) explains why surnames were assigned throughout Europe during this period, how Jewish names were invented, and why some Jewish Galician had surnames of sites in Switzerland.
Naomi Lubrich: Dear Johannes, What is the history of Jewish surnames, how far do they go back?
Johannes Czakai: Some medieval Jewish families already had surnames. But at the end of the 18th century, the majority of Jews didn’t yet have surnames. With the modernization of the European states, this changed, and in different ways across the continent: In the Habsburg Empire, Emperor Joseph II reformed Jewish legislation in the 1780s. To improve administration and the tax system, he mandated that Jews adopt distinguishable, hereditary family names so that they could be identified. Another reason was the belief that their language, Yiddish, stood in the way of their cultural «improvement.» And one means to that end – at least in the Austrian province of Galicia – was to oblige them to take German names.
The various regions had different priorities. When France mandated in 1808 that its Jewish citizens adopt fixed family names, the goal was found to be «noble,» namely to emancipate them and dismantle religious barriers. From the perspective of Napoleonic legislation, Jews and non-Jews were not to be distinguished by name. Following France’s example, the states of the Confederation of the Rhine issued similar decrees – in the Grand Duchy of Baden, neighboring Switzerland, for instance, in 1809. Some states, however, mandated surnames for Jews decades later. Others never did so at all. To my knowledge, Switzerland never passed such a decree.
NL: Who invented and distributed surnames?
JC: This also varied from region to region. To begin with, most regulations – from France to Baden, Westphalia, Bavaria, Prussia, Austria, and Russia – stipulated that Jews should choose their own names. Judging from the names given in the individual countries, this is indeed what happened to a large extent. Especially in German-speaking regions, where Western Yiddish and German were very similar, we can assume that for Jews, adopting a German name was linguistically unproblematic. Many were common Yiddish first names, such as Hirsch, Meyer, and Wolff; place names like Bamberger and Landau; and house names, like Adler and Stern. Some, such as Dreifuss, Einstein, or Oppenheimer, were used long before the decrees were written. Other names were new creations, such as Blumenthal, Löwenstein, and Rosenberg. There is evidence that non-Jewish officials rejected some newly chosen names. In most cases, they wanted to avoid place names as family names, as these might appear too «Jewish.»
The situation was more complicated in the Habsburg Monarchy. In Galicia, the name decrees led to hundreds of thousands of Yiddish-speaking Jews adopting predominantly German surnames, such as Brenner, Friedmann, Neumann, Rosenberg, Singer, and Weiss. Unlike in German-speaking regions, this was not out of patriotic sentiment, but rather because German-speaking officials had invented most of the names. They were legally authorized to do so. Although a provision allowed the Jewish heads of households to choose their name, officials in fact most often invented all the names in the town themselves. There’s a theory that most of these names were meant to be insulting, but it can’t be substantiated. Absurd to downright hateful name creations – such as «Affengesicht» (Monkey Face), «Goldschaum» (Gold Foam), and «Schlangenkopf» (Snake Head) – suggest that some of the officers were malicious and antisemitic. Yet the majority appears to have been formed from German nouns and adjectives, without the intention of stigmatizing those bearing them.
NL: Certain Eastern European Jewish families have place names from Switzerland and southern Germany. Which ones were these, and what is your theory as to why?
JC: From the perspective of Swiss Jewish history, the Jewish surnames Appenzeller, Berner, Endinger, Klingenau, Lenzburger, Zürcher, and Zurgilgen are both intriguing and puzzling, as these families did not live in Switzerland or southern Germany, but over a thousand kilometers away in Bukovina, a region that was once part of the Austrian province of Galicia. There is no knowledge of Jews having migrated from the Upper Rhine to Eastern Europe at that time, so the names caught my attention and prompted me to investigate further. Eventually, I discovered that Johann Fidelis Erggelet, the Austrian official who, in 1786, signed the decree requiring Jewish families in Bukovina to adopt fixed surnames, was originally from Waldshut. The new names in Bukovina bear a striking resemblance to places, people, and even field names known only to locals in the border town on the Rhine, such as Liedermat, Rohalden, and Schmiedenauer. Most likely, they were assigned by someone who came from this region, and that would have been Erggelet. I argue that Erggelet did not assign these names to ridicule Jews or to stigmatize them, on the contrary: He was a typical Austrian civil servant of the Josephinian Enlightenment era, and his goal was to advance the proximity of Jews to the non-Jewish population through what he considered «normal» names and to break down cultural barriers. He apparently, however, didn’t consider that much of the non-Jewish population of Bukovina had Romanian or Ukrainian names, and that Jews’ southern German names would, over the course of the nationalist upheavals of the 19th century, come to symbolize cultural separation.
NL: What other questions are being explored in Jewish onomastics?
JC: Names help us understand a fascinating period of Jewish history; yet we still know far too little. It remains unclear to what extent Jews accepted or rejected the names imposed on them. In some cases, we know that emancipated Jews in German-speaking regions reacted enthusiastically to the name decrees because they believed that a civil name would be one more step toward equal rights. In Hamburg, for example, community leaders asked the city administration for permission to adopt fixed names. But we have no firsthand accounts from the people who adopted new family names around 1800. Therefore, we can mostly only speculate as to whether they chose their names themselves, were forced to do so, and what they generally thought of the new names. Were Yiddish-speaking Jews even aware of the exact meaning of their German surname? Was Mr. Seidentuch given his name because he traded in silk scarves, or was his name chosen arbitrarily? Did Mr. Schiller want to express his admiration for the great writer? None of this can be answered in general terms; it can only be clarified through a detailed biographical examination of individual cases.
Furthermore, I wonder to what extent stereotypical images associated with «Jewish» names have survived to this day. Names, like other attributes, can convey antisemitic codes and label a person as supposedly «Jewish.» Take, for instance, antisemitic conspiracy narratives that fantasize about the alleged power of «the Rothschilds,» whose Jewish origins are implied through their name, originally from Frankfurt’s Judengasse. Most people may not even be aware of this connection. It would be important and fascinating to examine this perception more closely and to ask how the stereotype of the «Jewish» name has changed since the 19th century and continues to circulate in jokes, books, and movies today.
NL: Dear Johannes, Many thanks for your insights!
verfasst am 29.05.2026
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