Hebraization of surnames

The Hebraization of surnames (also Hebraicization;^[1][2] Hebrew: עברות Ivrut) is the act of amending one's Jewish surname so that it originates from the Hebrew language, which was natively spoken by Jews and Samaritans until it died out of everyday use by around 200 CE. For many diaspora Jews, immigrating to the Land of Israel and taking up a Hebrew surname has long been conceptualized as a way to erase remnants of their diaspora experience, particularly since the inception of Zionism in the 19th century. This notion, which was part of what drove the Zionist revival of the Hebrew language, was further consolidated after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Hebraizing surnames has been an especially common practice among Ashkenazi Jews; many Ashkenazi families had acquired permanent surnames (rather than patronyms) only when surnames were made compulsory by Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire following an official decree on 12 November 1787.^[3] Sephardic Jews often had hereditary family names (e.g., Cordovero, Abrabanel, Shaltiel, de Leon, Alcalai, Toledano, Lopez) since well before the Spanish expulsion of Jews near the end of the Reconquista, which had begun after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century.

After the extinction of Hebrew, very few Hebrew surnames existed among Jews in the diaspora. Examples of those that persisted include Cohen (כֹּהֵן, lit. 'kohen'), Moss (מֹשֶׁה, lit. 'Moses'), and Levi (לוי, lit. 'Levite'). Several Hebrew surnames, such as Katz (כּ״ץ, ABBR. kohen tzedek or kohen tzadok, lit. 'righteous priest' or 'priest of Zadok') and Bogoraz (ABBR. Ben ha-Rav Zalman, from בן הרב זאַלמאַן, lit. 'son of Rabbi Zalman') are, in fact, Hebrew acronyms, despite being commonly perceived as being of non-Jewish origin (in these cases, from German and Russian, respectively).

Hebraization began as early as the days of the First Aliyah. The widespread trend towards Hebraization of surnames in the days of the Yishuv (i.e., Palestinian Jews) and after Israel's founding was based on the idea of returning to an authentic Jewish identity and thus having a stronger sense of one's Israeli Jewishness. Likewise, it was also tied in with the desire among diaspora Jews to distance themselves from the lost and dead past of exile and also from the imposition upon Jews of foreign names in previous centuries.^[4]

The process of Hebraization among the Jewish diaspora has continued since Israel's founding in 1948; among the thousands of olim and olot who currently apply for legal name changes in Israel each year, many do so to adopt Hebrew names and thereby assimilate into a shared Jewish national identity, chiefly with Mizrahi Jews.^[5]