ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1925 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1925 ************************************ 17 Mar 2000 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if the name would have been used by a Jewish woman living between 1200 and 1450 in Moorish Spain, Morocco, the Balkans, or Malta. Here is the information we have found. We can only give you a partial answer, for two reasons. First: We have some data on Jewish names in your period in Islamic Spain and North Africa, but not in Malta or the Balkans. One might reasonably believe that Jewish names in Malta were similar, but we don't know anything about Jewish naming in the Balkans and we don't think our data can be extrapolated that far. Second: We have few examples of Jewish names in Hebrew in any of the places you asked about. In most of our data, Jews' names are recorded in various other languages, including Arabic. Jews carried out much of their secular business in the vernacular, so that wills, contracts, and other legal documents are in the local language. Even in religious documents like ketubot, names are recorded in Arabic [6]. As a consequence, we can't say much about how Jewish women were identified in Hebrew -- or even if they ever were identified in Hebrew -- just how they were identified in other languages. Many people expect medieval Jewish names to resemble modern Hebrew names, e.g. or ; but medieval Jewish naming practices were not the same as modern ones. At least in European communities, Jewish men were generally known by two names, one in Hebrew and one in the local language. They used their Hebrew names in religious and legal contexts within the Jewish community, and their vernacular names in dealings with the surrounding community. These two names were sometimes closely related, sometimes not. Often the relationship is difficult to recognize, e.g. the Hebrew is often translated into French as because the lion is associated with the biblical Judah [1]. We haven't found evidence of this double naming system in Islamic countries; there, it appears that Jews only had Arabic names and used them in all spheres of life [2, 11]. For example, was a 10th century Jewish poet living in Baghdad and Fez; his poetry, in Hebrew, incorporates acrostics of his Arabic name [12]. Medieval Jewish women did not have a second, entirely Hebrew name, even in Europe. Some women had given names drawn from Jewish tradition, but many had vernacular names, often names popular among the surrounding non-Jewish population. Some Hebrew names were certainly used by medieval Jewish women, but the selection of names doesn't follow an obvious pattern [2, 11]. In modern Hebrew, it is not unusual for common words to be used as names; but we have seen little evidence of this practice in medieval Jewish naming. , taken from a form of the Hebrew word for "gold", seems to be an example of a name invented in modern times. We recommend you choose another name. You wrote that you want a name beginning with \s\ or \z\. We have found a few names that fit that criterion. The following Arabic names were used by Jewish women in medieval Cairo [6, 7]: Sa'ada Sabah Sarwa The apostrophe in the first name represents a glottal stop, which the sound in the middle of . These Spanish names were used by Jewish women in Christian Spain [8, 9]: C,ahadia (The symbol represents c-cedilla, pronounced \ts\.) Saloro, Saloru Sol We've also found examples of , in various spellings, in late-medieval Cairo, 13th century Catalonia, and elsewhere in the medieval Jewish world [2, 3, 4, 6, 7]. If you decide that the meaning "gold" is more important to you than the sound of your name, you might consider the Spanish name , which was used by a Jewish woman in Castile in 1219, or the Arabic , which was used by Jewish women in Cairo [7, 9]. was one of the biblical names common among medieval Jewish women in Europe and probably elsewhere, too [2, 3, 4, 5]. However, we have found very few Jewish names which identified a Jew as her mother's child. In both Arabic and Spanish, it was most common for a woman to be known as her father's daughter. We've seen the same sort of names in Hebrew in other parts of Europe [10]. However, we should stress that we have found no records of women's names in Hebrew in medieval Iberia or North Africa, so we can only speculate how they were formed. Given our limited evidence, the option we can suggest as the best re-creation is a name in Arabic. In Arabic, Sara the daughter of Yusef would most often have been called . We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Juliana de Luna, Pedro de Alcazar, Raquel Buenaventura, Amant le Marinier, Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Julie Stampnitzky, and Blaise de Cormeilles. For the Academy, Aryanhwy merch Catmael & Arval Benicoeur 17 Mar 2000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References & Notes: [1] Eleazar ha-Levi, "Jewish Naming Convention in Angevin England" (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/jewish.html The association of Judah with the lion is mentioned in Genesis 49:9. [2] 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). [3] Burns, Robert I., _Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). [4] Carrasco Pe/rez, Juan _La Poblacio'n de Navarra en el Siglo XIV_ (Pamplona, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A, 1973). [5] _Poem of the Cid_, ed. Ramo/n Mene/ndez Pidal, trans. W. S. Merwin (New York, Meridian, 1975 [1959]). [6] 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). [7] Juliana de Luna, "Jewish Women's Names in Arab Context: Names from the Geniza of Cairo", in preparation. [8] Menedez-Pidal, Ramon, _Crestomati'a del Espan~ol Medieval_ (Madrid: 1971). [9] 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/ [10] Eidelberg, Shlomo, trans. and ed., _The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades_ (The Regents of the Univ. of Wisconsin System, 1977; New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House, 1996). [11] Yosef Karo and Moshe Isserles, _The Shulchan Aruch and Mapah_ (16th C) in "Bar Ilan Study Buddy CD-ROM" (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University and Monsey, NY: Torah Educational Software, 1999). (See Even Ha'ezer 129:16.) This CD is available at Bar Ilan University's website, http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Responsa/commercial.html. [12] "Dunash ben Labrat" in Roth, Cecil (Ed.), _Encyclopedia Judaica_. (1971: Keter Publishing House Ltd., Jerusalem). A new edition was published 1994, and an edition on CD-ROM is available from TES, Monsey, NJ.