# Certain German names and Jewish Americans **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972 "2019-10-18T22:17:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/21 "2019-10-20T02:10:20Z")
Last time I read about it was in a Jewish encyclopedia, maybe Encyclopedia Judaica?, in 1987. The person doing library duty at the Jewish Community Center showed it to me. I had been curious because I knew a Jewish Einstein and Eisenberg who had both told me about this phenomenon when I was working in Israel. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/22 "2019-10-20T02:14:24Z")
Just a guess, but could it be that the Jewish Germans with those last names fled Germany while the Gentile ones didn’t? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/23 "2019-10-20T02:37:08Z")
I don’t have any cites, but perhaps some anecdotes might point others in the right direction. Most of mine ancestors are German. Specifically, what is now western and southern Germany (they left before unification). German family names are very prevalent where I grew up. Their families are also from western and southern Germany, also coming over in late 1700s, early 1800s. Perhaps Jewish families tended to come from eastern Germany, and more recently. That gives both regional and temporal differences. Thinking of Germany as one country is probably misleading for this sort of historical research. ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/24 "2019-10-20T02:40:03Z")
The German _[burg](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Burg#German)_ means “castle, fortification”, and it can be found in settlement names such as Hamburg, Duisburg, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Oldenburg, Würzburg and Wolfsburg. Its Proto-Germanic root,\*_burgz_, meaning “stronghold, city” is also the origin of cognates in other languages, such as Middle English _burgh_ (e.g. Edinburgh, Bamburgh, Carrawburgh and Dunstanburgh, and also “borough”), French _bourg_ (e.g. Strasbourg, Cherbourg, Bourg-en-Bresse), Dutch _burcht_, and Swedish _borg_ (e.g. Helsingborg, Trelleborg, Björn Borg). The similar-sounding German _[berg](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/berg#Old_High_German)_ means “hill, mountain”, and gives name to places such as Bergen, Heidelberg, Nürnberg and Württemberg. _[Stein](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stein#Old_High_German)_ means “stone”, and has the same Germanic root as the English word. The places Holstein, Liechtenstein, Stein-Bockenheim derive from this root. Maybe when the German Jews took last names in 1787, they took the names of the places where they lived, rather than occupational names, although _-stein_ endings might be occupational. For example, Goldstein means “gold” + “stone”, and may be an occupational name related to precious stones. They more likely lived in urban areas, being descendants of immigrant communities. The word [burgher](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burgher), derived from the same \*_burgz_ root, means “a citizen of a borough or town, especially one belonging to the middle class.” ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/25 "2019-10-20T02:53:49Z")
Here are some [origins of Jewish last names](https://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Meaning-of-Some-Common-Jewish-Last-Names.html) with _-berg_ endings: > [@](#): > > **Goldberg:** this name refers to the towns of Goldberg in Germany and/or in Poland, both once home to Jewish communities. The name means “golden town”. > … > **Greenberg:** referring to the towns of Grunberg in Germany and Poland, both once home to Jewish communities > … > **Weinberg:** referring to any of various places in Europe which once were home to thriving Jewish communities, including the region of Mt. Weinberg in Westphalia, Germany, or towns named Weinberg in Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/26 "2019-10-20T04:50:23Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > One of my college roommates had such a Germanic surname (only his ended in “baum”). He and his family were Catholic; as far as he knew, he had no Jewish ancestry. > > But, when he was a freshman (at the University of Wisconsin), he kept getting letters in his dorm mailbox from Hillel (the campus Jewish center). […] They told him that, every year, they got a copy of the list of freshmen students from the university, and would put the ones with typically Jewish-sounding surnames on their mailing list. I happen to have a mirror-image version of that story. As you and I have discussed before, I lived in Madison, WI for a decade; I attended grad school there. My father is Jewish and I have what most Ashkenazi Jews recognize as a Jewish last name. Yet Hillel never reached out to me. Why not? Almost certainly, it’s because my last name is also shared by a large cluster of Wisconsin Catholics. I used to get asked all the time whether I was related to them—I’m definitely not. So while Hillel Madison reached out to gentiles because they had Jewish-sounding names, they also refrained from reaching out to Jews because they had (locally) Catholic-sounding names. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/27 "2019-10-20T15:07:45Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Today and for the last 70 years, of course, there are so few Jews left in Germany that it’s unlikely any last names would stand out. Not true. Before 1933 there were about 500 000 Jews in Germany. Today there are about 200 000. [Cite.](https://eurojewcong.org/communities/germany/) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/28 "2019-10-20T16:21:03Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > Not true. Before 1933 there were about 500 000 Jews in Germany. Today there are about 200 000. > > [Cite.](https://eurojewcong.org/communities/germany/) And Google says the population of Germany this year is 83.52 million. Which means that 83.32 million are not Jewish. The Jews in Germany before the war, as were the Jews in America in the 19th century, were disproportionately successful. They stood out enough to be useful targets and scapegoats. I don’t believe that the 0.25% of Germans who are Jews are that disproportionately successful and visible today. That’s not the same thing as saying there is no anti-semitism, which appears on the rise across Europe. I’m just saying that the Jewish population, which went down to something like 15,000 immediately after the war and has grown much less than other minority populations in Germany, is numerically too small for their names to be noticeable against a sea of similar German names. And that would be true even if they had German names. They don’t. If you had bothered to read your cite, you would have noticed that 85% of the Jews in Germany today emigrated after the fall of the Communist countries and are native-Russian speakers. It’s unlikely that very many of them have stereotypical German names. That number is vanishingly small, ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/29 "2019-10-20T16:43:08Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > Not true. Before 1933 there were about 500 000 Jews in Germany. Today there are about 200 000. > > [Cite.](https://eurojewcong.org/communities/germany/) There aren’t really 200,000 Jews “left” in Germany, in the sense that the large majority of them are relatively recent Russian immigrants rather than descendants of the prewar community. In the context of this thread, that means they are likely to have Russian family names rather than German/Yiddish ones. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/30 "2019-10-20T21:31:42Z")
A friend of mine claimed that Jews were often assigned derogatory or humorous names. Look at the name Weinstein. A wine stone? Really? My wife’s original maiden name (it was changed): Lichtenthal. Light in the valley? What kind of name is that? Another possibility is that most of the German immigration to the US was to the mid-west while the Jewish immigration stayed east. If you run into a Weber from MO, they are probably German, but if you run into one in NY, probably Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/31 "2019-10-20T21:41:05Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > Not true. Before 1933 there were about 500 000 Jews in Germany. Today there are about 200 000. > > [Cite.](https://eurojewcong.org/communities/germany/) I was curious what these numbers mean in terms of % of population. 1933: 500k of 67M or .75% Now: 200k of 83.2M or .24% So not a big percentage to begin with and even smaller now. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/32 "2019-10-20T21:54:41Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > A friend of mine claimed that Jews were often assigned derogatory or humorous names. I read\* that some examples were Goldwater (a reference to urine) and Aselkopf (ass head\*\*). ISupposedly, wealthy Jews could pay to change their names to non-derogatory ones. A prestigious one was Morgenstern (morning star). Possibly, other prestigious, bought names are some of the ones associated with Jews in America? \*In “An Underground Education” by Richard Zacks. \*\* No word on “Beavis” 🙂 > [@](#): > > Another possibility is that most of the German immigration to the US was to the mid-west while the Jewish immigration stayed east. If you run into a Weber from MO, they are probably German, but if you run into one in NY, probably Jewish. Good point. In addition to regional patterns, there might have been an urban/rural divide–more Jews in the cities. > [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](#): > > Maybe when the German Jews took last names in 1787, they took the names of the places where they lived, rather than occupational names, although _-stein_ endings might be occupational. Another good point, in light of the fact that Jews were often banned from trade guilds. Hence, more Rosenbergs, fewer Muellers. ---
**Author:** ![WilliamWilsonsDoppelgaenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@WilliamWilsonsDoppelgaenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilliamWilsonsDoppelgaenger)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/33 "2019-10-20T23:07:13Z")
Based on my own memories of what I heard about Jewish names in Germany and the German wikipedia article on the topic ([Jüdischer Name – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCdischer_Name)): During the late 18th and early 19th century, Jews were required to adopt German (or German-sounding) last names in the various German states of the time, while previously they often still used either patronyms or Hebrew names. By that time, most gentile Germans already had fixed last names (and those names had already undergone some changes). Jews for the most part could choose their own names, and they often picked ones with pleasant sound and meaning, such as the combinations of Rose, Gold, Silber (silver), Blume (flower) with -berg, -tal (valley) etc. Others picked names after the occupation or their place of residence (including markings of their houses, such as Rothschild = red shield/sign). Germanized versions of Hebrew names or references to the Torah were also quite common (apparently names with Weizen = wheat and Wein = wine refer to the crops of Israel listed in the book of Moses, and certain animals such as Hirsch = deer and colors like Schwarz = black were associated with the 12 tribes). I’ve also heard the version mentioned above by **F. U. Shakespeare** that administrations that were less well-disposed towards Jews often assigned them derogatory names (or at least made them to pay to avoid such names), but the wiki article claims that was not common. I assumed that Knoblauch/Knobloch = garlic (the name of the current head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch) was an example of that; maybe I was mistaken. So based on all this, there certainly are statistical differences between Jewish and gentile German last names. That being said, there is also a huge amount of overlap, due to intermarriage, conversion, gradual change of names or Jews choosing common German last names to start with. Many of the examples in the wiki article I considered pretty standard (gentile) German last names, and I know people with some of these names that I’m quite sure are not Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2019, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/34 "2019-10-20T23:30:35Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Just a guess, but could it be that the Jewish Germans with those last names fled Germany while the Gentile ones didn’t? That sounds plausible. Do statistics exist that could confirm it? When did major German Jewish emigration to the US occur? Before WWI, German gentiles were almost a state-within-a-state; many changed names when “Krauts and Huns” became an evil enemy. > [@EdelweissPirate](#): > > I happen to have a mirror-image version of that story. In a similar mirror: A couple of my San Francisco co-workers, whose grandfathers had shortened their Germanic Jewish family names to Lee and Wing, constantly received invitations from Chinese-American associations. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2019, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/35 "2019-10-21T04:42:18Z")
I remember about 20 or 25 years ago running into a consultant named Feldmann. He joked that the extra “n” kept his family out of the camps. (Actually, what he meant was his name was gentile, like his family, not Jewish). I may be misremembering and it’s the other way around, one “n”. I’m not clear what the significance or relevance of this was in terms of Jewish vs. non-Jewish names… Also, I recall reading that a lot of Jewish families that came over around 1900 would simplify/anglicize their names - I.e. turn Greenberg to “Green”, etc. to better blend into American society. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2019, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/36 "2019-10-21T13:37:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Based on my own memories of what I heard about Jewish names in Germany and the German wikipedia article on the topic ([Jüdischer Name – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCdischer_Name)): During the late 18th and early 19th century, Jews were required to adopt German (or German-sounding) last names in the various German states of the time, while previously they often still used either patronyms or Hebrew names. By that time, most gentile Germans already had fixed last names (and those names had already undergone some changes). Jews for the most part could choose their own names, and they often picked ones with pleasant sound and meaning, such as the combinations of Rose, Gold, Silber (silver), Blume (flower) with -berg, -tal (valley) etc. Others picked names after the occupation or their place of residence (including markings of their houses, such as Rothschild = red shield/sign). Germanized versions of Hebrew names or references to the Torah were also quite common (apparently names with Weizen = wheat and Wein = wine refer to the crops of Israel listed in the book of Moses, and certain animals such as Hirsch = deer and colors like Schwarz = black were associated with the 12 tribes). I think this explains it. If I was forced to choose a last name, I would probably choose something like “Gold Mountain” or “Rose field” rather than “Miller” or “Smith”. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2019, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/37 "2019-10-21T15:45:01Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > I think this explains it. If I was forced to choose a last name, I would probably choose something like “Gold Mountain” or “Rose field” rather than “Miller” or “Smith”. I agree. Good post, **WilliamWilsonsDoppelgaenger**. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/38 "2019-10-21T16:19:19Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > I think this explains it. If I was forced to choose a last name, I would probably choose something like “Gold Mountain” or “Rose field” rather than “Miller” or “Smith”. Kraft. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/39 "2019-10-22T00:46:08Z")
> [@WilliamWilsonsDoppelgaenger](#): > > Based on my own memories of what I heard about Jewish names in Germany and the German wikipedia article on the topic ([Jüdischer Name – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCdischer_Name)): During the late 18th and early 19th century, Jews were required to adopt German (or German-sounding) last names in the various German states of the time, while previously they often still used either patronyms or Hebrew names. By that time, most gentile Germans already had fixed last names (and those names had already undergone some changes). Jews for the most part could choose their own names, and they often picked ones with pleasant sound and meaning, such as the combinations of Rose, Gold, Silber (silver), Blume (flower) with -berg, -tal (valley) etc. Others picked names after the occupation or their place of residence (including markings of their houses, such as Rothschild = red shield/sign). Germanized versions of Hebrew names or references to the Torah were also quite common (apparently names with Weizen = wheat and Wein = wine refer to the crops of Israel listed in the book of Moses, and certain animals such as Hirsch = deer and colors like Schwarz = black were associated with the 12 tribes). > > I’ve also heard the version mentioned above by **F. U. Shakespeare** that administrations that were less well-disposed towards Jews often assigned them derogatory names (or at least made them to pay to avoid such names), but the wiki article claims that was not common. I assumed that Knoblauch/Knobloch = garlic (the name of the current head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch) was an example of that; maybe I was mistaken. > > So based on all this, there certainly are statistical differences between Jewish and gentile German last names. That being said, there is also a huge amount of overlap, due to intermarriage, conversion, gradual change of names or Jews choosing common German last names to start with. Many of the examples in the wiki article I considered pretty standard (gentile) German last names, and I know people with some of these names that I’m quite sure are not Jewish. I have restrained from this thread until now, because my contribution would have been solely anecdotal and I didn’t have a cite, but your post confirms my memory. I remember being told by (I think) a schoolteacher that at one time in German history, the Jews had to choose surnames, but couldn’t take just anyone. They could choose pleasing sounding names like Goldberg, Rosenthal etc, but they had to pay for a nice name. Maybe that explains why some, obviously the poorer folks, ended up with “ugly” names like Knobloch. That’s still just one of my memories from school and a little conjecture, but it’d fit with the info in your post. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972/40 "2019-10-22T03:05:56Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > A wine stone? Really? My wife’s original maiden name (it was changed): Lichtenthal. Light in the valley? What kind of name is that? 😕 A really badass sounding one? Why wouldn’t you want a name like that? It evokes a beautiful vision. As for wine stone, I googled “stone wine press” on the assumption that stone was probably used in wine presses historically, and most of the first page of hits are about ancient wine presses built out of stone in Israel - so presumably there was, in fact, an association between wine and stone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/certain-german-names-and-jewish-americans/841972.md?page=3)