When Jokele Berkowicz Became Jakob Funkelstein
Reassessing the Adoption of Jewish Family Names in Galicia – Live on Zoom
The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History invites audiences to a fascinating online lecture, “When Jokele Berkowicz Became Jakob Funkelstein: Reassessing the Adoption of Jewish Family Names in Galicia,” to be held live on Zoom.
Focusing on the 1780s, when thousands of Jews in Habsburg Galicia adopted new hereditary family names, this presentation offers a fresh historical reassessment of a subject long shaped by anecdote and stereotype. Drawing on newly discovered archival materials and the analysis of thousands of surnames, the lecture will revisit the political circumstances of surname adoption and examine the actual processes through which these names were created.
The talk promises to shed light on the many sources of Galician Jewish surnames - from imaginative coinages and occupational designations to references to personal traits and literary influences. It will also offer valuable guidance for genealogists and family historians working with Galician records such as metrical books, census lists, and gravestones, showing how a better understanding of naming practices can help reconstruct biographies even from the period before hereditary surnames were fully established.
The speaker, Johannes Czakai, PhD, is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on early modern Jewish history, names, genealogy, conversions, and espionage. He is also the author of the award-winning 2021 monograph Nochems neue Namen, an important contribution to the study of Jewish naming practices in Galicia and Bukovina.
This promises to be an engaging and highly relevant event for scholars of onomastics, Jewish history, genealogy, and Central and Eastern European history alike.
Ticket information: Pay what you wish.
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