There is apparently a myth that when Austrian Jews were forced to adopt family names, the name-granting officials accepted bribes for “better” names and otherwise gave insulting names.
This article seeks to dispel that myth —
“Did Jews Buy Their Last Names?”
There apparently were some genuinely insulting names assigned, but the vast majority of German-speaking Jews have non-insulting names:
How is “sharp as a knife”, “stony”, or “branched” derogatory? “Cat’s wing” is just badass, although it is also ridiculous.
I’d like to know why, with how commonly names for groups of people have changed over the years, Jews haven’t renamed Ashkenazi to something that doesn’t contain the word “nazi.” I know that name predates the German use of the term but still, you’d think in recent years there would be a push to rename that particular descriptor.
Perhaps you meant the German word Rot, which means ‘red’?
And yet, Cohen and Levi are still the most common Jewish surnames.
“Roth” is just a very close variant of “rot,” if you look at the bigger picture of Germanic languages over the past one or two thousand years. Look at the slightly bigger picture, and modern English “red” (and “ruddy”) is just another variant of what philologists would consider basically the same “word”. French “rouge,” Spanish “rojo,” etc. are close cousins.
Making them change their name is of course pretty insulting but the names themselves are not. As mentioned, the vast majority of these colour names refer to smithing and Smith is about the most common gentile name there is in the English speaking world.
Roth is a very standard old-fashioned spelling of the same word, still well known today.
Rothschild means “Red Shield”, not “child of Roth”.
Being assigned a name has at the very least a small insult baked into it no matter what.
Why is that a thing you think people would want? It’s not even pronounced the same. 
Yes.
Then apply Grimm’s Law.
That’s a joke, right? Grimm’s Law applies to changes that took place circa 500 BC. Also, it had to do with changes in pronunciation, because the Germanic languages then were unwritten. Rot and Roth are pronounced exactly the same in German. I wonder what the h was even doing there in the first place, but to keep it in English-speaking countries is obviously preferable. Likewise, there are German women named Rut, but you better believe in an English-speaking country they’d be Ruth.
I once met a nice old couple from Hungary whose last name was Vitriol. I had difficulty comprehending how anybody could have that for their name, but then I learned about the malicious Austro-Hungarian registrars.
After looking up, it seems that, as already mentioned in this thread, the “malicious Austro-Hungarian registrars” story is a myth.
I always suspected you were a Magyar-spewing Austro-Hungarian sympathizer. :mad:
I knew a Jewish kid at camp whose surname was Pope.
“Roth” was the standard spelling until the reform of 1876. It could still be found well into the early 1900s.
Vitriol isn’t necessarily offensive. Besides sulfuric acid, it also means a type of colourful crystal.
Yes, I thought about mentioning this; specifically IIRC subsequent to the 1901 Orthographische Konferenz it is now strictly speaking “incorrect” to spell roth for rot, thun for tun, etc., whereas before 1876 many of the “th” spellings were standard or preferred. Note that the /θ/ phoneme is rather rare these days, in particular nonexistent in modern German and Germanic languages (English is one of the exceptions). As for the wisdom of spelling reform, that is way outside the scope of this thread.
Sorry, but Grimm’s Law never went away; I’ve seen examples of it in the early 80s* and occasionally spot them even today.
*A dictionary of prison slang I read back then had “vic” as the interest on the loan. This is obviously derived from “vigorish” (interest on a loan, first showing up in the late 1950s), shorted to “vig,” and then Grimm’s took over.
Tangentially related to the subject of this thread: family names on Grön- (Swedish for Green-), like Grönfors, Grönroos and Grönhall seem to be somewhat common among Finnish Roma families (yes, Swedish is an official language in Suomi too :))!