ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1896 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1896 ************************************ 10 Jan 2000 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 13th century Jew from Castile. You told us that is Hebrew "clarity, brightness". Here is what we have found. A Jewish man in your period would probably have been identified in Hebrew within his community and in the vernacular when dealing with his non-Jewish neighbors. In Castile, of course, the vernacular was Castilian Spanish. In your period, Arabic was still an important language of literature and learning in Iberia, so he might also have used an Arabic form of his name. You might therefore want to use the forms of your name in each language. and are modern transliterations of two Old Testament names [4]. The first of these names most often appears in medieval Navarrese and Catalan records as , and we believe that spelling would be appropriate for other Spanish dialects as well [1, 2, 3]. is less common among medieval Western European Jews, but we found a couple examples in Catalan records from your period: and [3]. The two names also had Arabic forms, and [7]. The apostrophe in represents a glottal stop, the sound in the middle of . The words and both mean "son"; the first is Arabic and the second Hebrew. Both were used to form Jewish patronymic surnames in medieval Spanish records [2, 3]. We believe would have been more common in Castilian records. The Arabic appears in Spanish records in a variety of spellings; and are typical of the 13th century [8]: Aboadile Aben~acar 1265 (? ibn Nasr) Mahomat Abenmahomat 1255 (Muhammad ibn Muhammad) Domingo Avenjo 1278 Juan Venjan~es 1288 (Juan son of Juan) The symbol represents an n-tilde, i.e. an 'n' with a squiggle over it. The Sefer ha-Bahir is a 12th century Kabbalistic text. The Hebrew word literally means "brilliant" or "illumination" [5]. We don't think it would have been used as a Hebrew descriptive nickname in medieval Europe. The examples we've found of medieval Hebrew descriptive nicknames are much more straightforward. They include occupational terms like "the scribe", religious terms like "the member of the priestly clan", and simple physical descriptions like "the short" [6]. In Spanish records, many Jewish names included bynames similar to those found in Christian names of the same period: , Castile 1219, Navarra 1350, "Judah son of Juce Cardeniel" Navarra 1366. Others contained bynames transliterated from Hebrew or Arabic: "Judah ibn Issac", Navarra 1350 [1]. The symbol represents a c-cedilla, a 'c' with a hook hanging from the bottom. It was pronounced \ts\ in this period. A short Jew named , the son of Ishmael, could have been known in Hebrew in your period as . In 13th century Castilian Spanish records he might have been identified as or . In Arabic he could have been known as . 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 Maridonna Benvenuti, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Juliana de Luna, Raquel Buenaventura, Pedro de Alcazar, Talan Gwynek, and Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 10 Jan 2000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] 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/ [2] Garci/a-Arenal, Mercedes and Be/atrice Leroy, _Moros y Judios en Navarra en la Baja Edad Media_ (Madrid: Ediciones Hiperio/n, 1984). [3] Burns, Robert I., _Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350_. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. [4] We are using modern standard transliterations to illustrate Hebrew and Arabic words. In general, these Roman-alphabet spellings would not have been used in period. If you need a Hebrew or Arabic spelling of your name, please write us again. [5] Faigin, Daniel P., ed., "What is Sefer haBahir, The Bahir (The Book of Illumination)?" in the soc.culture.jewish FAQ (WWW), accessed 20 Dec 1999. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/03-Torah-Halacha/section-33.html [6] Eleazar ha-Levi, "Names Found on List of 11th to 16th Century Italian Jewish Scribes" in Known World Heraldic Symposium Proceedings (Rochester, NY: SCA, Inc., 1998). [7] Mustapha al-Muhaddith ibn al-Saqaat, "Arabic Pesonal Names from the Futuwwah", ed. Arval Benicoeur and Avelina of the Bridge (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1999). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/mustapha/futuwwah.html [8] Diez Melcon, R. P. Gonzalo, _Apellidos Castellano-Leoneses: Siglos IX-XIII, ambos inclusive_ (Universidad de Granada, 1957).