ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1786
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1786
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* NOTE: Later research turned up additional *
* information relevant to this report. *
* See the end of the letter for details. *
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24 Nov 1999
From: (Josh Mittleman)
Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for help choosing a name appropriate for an Iberian Jewish woman
around the year 950, and a peerage title that fits that culture. You are
particular interested in the name <She'erah bat Shlomo>, possibly with an
additional phrase meaning "from Cordova". Here is what we have found.
Before I begin, I'd like to thank you for your question. It's been a
particularly interesting piece of research. I only wish we could have
found more information for you.
We have no sources for Jewish names in Iberia before the millenium. We
have some good sources for Jewish names in Iberian Christian kingdoms in
later centuries, and some sources for Jewish names in Islamic kingdoms
outside Iberia. Cordova in your period was an important Islamic city, of
course, having been conquered by Muslims in 756 and not re-captured by
Christians until 1236 [13]; so our data isn't a great basis for answering
your question. With that caveat, we'll offer our best suggestions.
In our data, the general pattern in both Christian and Islamic kingdoms is
that Jewish women used non-Hebrew names much more often than not and were
generally known by their given names alone. Joseph Schatzmiller, in the
best general survey of medieval European Jewish names that we've found,
says:
Les femmes juives, qui n'assument que peu de responsabilite/s religieuses
ou juridiques, n'ont en ge/ne/ral qu'un seul nom, et assez souvent il
s'agit d'une unique nom latin, arabe or allemand [1].
Jewish women, who bore few religious or juridical responsibilities,
generally had only a single name, and quite often that one was a single
Latin, Arabic, or German name.
This is not to say that Hebrew names were not used in some cases. We have
found examples in medieval Christian Spain of several [6, 7, 8]:
Standard Medieval Spanish
English Form Forms
Hannah <Ana> 13th c. Catalonia
Sara <Sarra> and <Sara> 13th c. Catalonia
Miriam <Miryam> and <Meriama> 13th c. Catalonia
Rachel <Raquel> in "El Cid"
Esther <Aster> 13th c. Catalonia; <Ezter> 14th c. Navarra
Hava (Eve) <Aya> 14th c. Navarra
In medieval Egypt, we found the same basic pattern: Most women used
standard Arabic names, though a few biblical names were used, comprising
2.5% of the names in our sample [10, 11]:
Standard Medieval Egyptian
English Form Forms (transliterated from Arabic
or Hebrew characters)
Rebecca <Rebekah> and <Rivka>
Sara <Sara>
Esther <Esther>
Miriam <Miriam>
Schatzmiller notes French medieval examples of <Sara>, <Rachel>, <Hana>,
and <Hava>. He also notes that medieval Jews used only a fairly small
sub-set of Old Testament names, and not always the expected ones. For that
reason, we do not recommend using a biblical name without evidence that it
was actually used in period. All our sources agree, though, that most
women used non-Hebrew names, including many names that were also common
among the surrounding Christian population.
In most cases where we find a Jewish woman identified beyond her given name
in Christian Europe, it is by a relational phrase, "daughter of" or "wife
of" a man, which isn't treated as part of her name [2]. For example, these
names were recorded in Catalonia between 1250 and 1400 [6]:
Mancose uxori Abrahe de la Roxela "wife of Abraho de la Roxela"
Adzero filee mei "my daughter"
Baynole sorori mei "my sister"
Regine filie Goyo filie mee "daughter of my daughter Goyo"
Jewish men are sometimes identified by a locative phrase like <de la
Roxela> in the example above, but we think this is less likely both for
women and for your early period.
We should note that we have studied vernacular sources for the most part,
not Hebrew. It is possible that Jewish naming patterns in Hebrew are
different from those in other languages; but Schatzmiller was far more
familiar with the evidence and our advice is consistent with his findings.
It's worth noting that in Christian Spain in your period surnames were just
beginning to be used, typically appearing in less than 10% of names.
Women's use of surnames developed later than men's [3]. This makes it more
likely that, at least in vernacular records in Christian kingdoms, a 10th
century Iberian Jewish woman's name would have consisted simply of a given
name.
In an Arabic culture, where both men and women were normally known as their
father's children, we think it is likely that Jewish names would have
followed the same pattern [12]. We suspect that a Jewish woman's name
might have been constructed either with the Hebrew <bat> or the Arabic
<bint>.
Women in Arabic culture sometimes used other types of bynames. We have
found an example of <al-Qurtubiyya> "the Cordovan [woman]" in Muslim
Spain [12].
We have no suggestion for a Hebrew title suitable to your rank and culture.
We suspect <Rabbi> is not appropriate, since it is a masculine term; but we
do not know what honorific might have been used for a learned woman in
Hebrew. You may be able to find more information in Bernadette Brooten's
book _Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue_ [5].
We can suggest two non-Hebrew titles appropriate to medieval Christian
Spain: <maestra> or its Latin form <magistra>, which means "master" in the
same sense as the English honorific for skilled artisans; and <domna> or
its Latin form <domina>, which is best translated "lady". In your period,
we would expect written records to use the Latin forms; we're not sure what
would have been used in daily speech.
We found the masculine Latin <magister> in use in your period [9]:
Magister Leui (976)
magister Gundesindo (994)
The first of these is especially interesting since the given name appears
to be the Hebrew name <Levi>, suggesting that the title was used at least
for Jewish men. The earliest feminine example we found is <Monna Duenna
magistra de Ripa> (12th century). We found vernacular forms of the title
beginning in the 11th century: <Garc,ia Maiestro> 1049, <Iohannes maiestro>
1064, <Fort Maester> 1104-34, and <Bernardo Mestro> = <Bernardus magister>
1160 [9].
For the second title, we found the masculine form <domno> in 965, and
feminine <domna> in 1079 [4].
In our Egyptian data, we found the byname <al-Mua'llima> "the
schoolmistress" used by a Jewish woman [10]. This is the SCA's official
Arabic form of <Mistress>, so it is one you may want to consider.
We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of
it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in
researching and writing this letter by Juliana de Luna, Talan Gwynek,
Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Elsbeth Anne Roth, Jaida Tanfa, Raquel
Buenaventura, Alan Fairfax, Alexander the Traveller, and Barak Raz.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
24 Nov 1999
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References
[1] Shatzmiller, Joseph, "Le Monde Juif", pp.87-96 in Bourin, Monique,
Jean-Marie-Martin, and Francois Menant, eds., _L'Anthroponymie: Document de
l'Histoire Sociale des Mondes Me/diterrane/ens Me/die/vaux_, Collection de
l'E/cole Franc,aise de Rome, 226 (Rome: E/cole Franc,aise de Rome, 1996).
[2] Our conclusions are drawn from various sources:
Eleazar ha-Levi, "Jewish Naming Convention in Angevin England" (WWW: SCA,
Inc., 1997).
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/jewish.html
Eleazar ha-Levi, "Names Found on List of 11th to 16th Century Italian
Jewish Scribes", in Known World Heraldic Symposium Proceedings,
Aethelmearc, 1998.
Colm Dubh, "An Index to the Given Names in the 1292 Census of Paris",
Proceedings of the Known World Heraldic Symposium 1996 (SCA: Montgomery,
Alabama; WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997).
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html
Juliana de Luna, "Medieval Spanish Jewish Names of the 13th and 14th
Centuries" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1998).
http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/juliana/iberian-jewish/
as well as reference [11] below, which is based on [10].
[3] Sopena, Pascual Marti/nez, ed., _Antroponimia y Sociedad_: Sistemas de
identificacio/n hispano-cristianos en los siglos IX a XIII_, Historie y
Sociedad no. 46 (Valladolid, Spain: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
and Universidad de Valladolid, 1995). This book is a collection of
articles on naming patterns throughout early medieval Christian Spain.
They generally show the use of bynames being rare until the 11th century,
gradually increasing in popularity over the next century or so, and then
becoming the dominant naming pattern around 1200. Women's names were
generally less complex than men's, with single names persisting longer.
[4] Menedez-Pidal, Ramon, _Crestomati'a del Espan~ol Medieval_ (Madrid:
1971).
[5] Brooten, Bernadette J., _Women leaders in the ancient synagogue :
inscriptional evidence and background issues_ (Chico, Calif. : Scholars
Press, c1982).
[6] Burns, Robert I., _Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in
Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350_ (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996).
[7] Carrasco Pe/rez, Juan _La Poblacio'n de Navarra en el Siglo XIV_
(Pamplona, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A, 1973).
[8] _Poem of the Cid_, ed. Ramo/n Mene/ndez Pidal, trans. W. S. Merwin
(New York, Meridian, 1975 [1959]).
[9] Kremer, Dieter. 'Bemerkungen zu den mittelalterlichen hispanischen
cognomina', in _Aufsa"tze zur Portugiesischen Kulturgeschichte_, vols. 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17. Sonderdruck aus Portugiesische Forschungen der
Go"rresgesellschaft. Herausgegeben von Hans Flasche (Mu"nster:
Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1970-1981/82), VII:84.
[10] Goitien, Solomon D., _A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities
of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza_, Vol
III: The Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
[11] Juliana de Luna, "Jewish Women's Names in Arab Context: Names from the
Geniza of Cairo", in preparation.
[12] Juliana de Luna, "Andalusian Names: Arabs in Spain", in preparation.
The article is based on Manuela Mari/n, _Estudios Onoma/stico-biogra/ficos
de al-Andalus_, 8 volumes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cienti/ficas, Instituto de Filologi/a, Departmento de Estudios Arabes,
1988-1997).
[13] "Co/rdoba" Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?eu=26695&sctn=1> [Accessed 16 November
1999].
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Addendum 10 May 2000: See report 2046 for more information on Hebrew
titles.