Do I have a Sephardic surname?
‘Sephardic surnames’ were popularized by a well-meaning, if confused, Ashkenazi amateur genealogist in the early days of the Internet in the late 1990s. On the now defunct sephardim.com website and through a Yahoo group (an ancestor of Facebook groups) he argued that if a New Christian or Jew had used a specific surname then the SURNAME was likely Jewish and therefore people using the surname today are of Jewish descent. Apparently Catholics using the same surname didn’t count!
The claim was plastered across the Internet in 2001. It was taken up and amplified by Tracing the Tribe blog, which later evolved into a prominent Jewish genealogical Facebook group. It has set back Sephardic genealogy by a generation. Every time it seems this nonsense is about to die, someone new picks it up.
The crypto-Judaism / bnei anusim movement latched on early to ‘Sephardic surnames’. While they have somewhat backtracked over recent years, I suspect that many or most of their followers were originally drawn in from researching their surname online and reading that it is ‘Jewish’.
Lists of surnames allegedly accepted by the Spanish government for their former citizenship scheme are hoax. Unfortunately, the Portuguese Law – ignorant of Sephardic genealogy – references some surnames. Claims that these and other alleged Sephardic surnames qualify you for Portuguese citizenship can even be found on some lawyers’ websites. Now, probably hundreds of people around the world mistakenly believe they are of Jewish descent, and some have even made major life changes as a consequence.
So, what’s the truth? If your surname is Cohen and you are descended from generations of Cohens then you are probably descended from a priest in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Likewise, a Levy is probably descended from the tribe of Levi. These are Jewish surnames. Jews were a minority in Spain and Portugal, and adopted the same surnames as everyone else. Sometimes they adopted their Old Christian godparents’ surname, and sometimes probably a surname was chosen for other reasons. It figures that most people with a specific apellido (surname) today will not be of patrilineal Jewish ancestry. A New Christian or Jew once using your surname does not suggest you have Jewish ancestry unless you can prove your descent from that person.
Depending on jurisdiction, your family surnames may not have been fixed until the late 18th Century. That is to say, the surname you have today may not have been used by your ancestors.
As with any rule, there are exceptions. The surname Israel was reportedly used by some converts to Judaism. I suspect Jessurun may be an invented surname.
Context is important in workout out whether an ancestor was Jewish. Someone called Sarah Mendoza in 18th Century London will probably have been Jewish. She has a Hebrew surname and lived somewhere where most people with Spanish or Portuguese surnames were Jewish. Someone called Maria Mendoza in Mexico at the same time looks to be Catholic and would require strong evidence to prove otherwise.
Most Common Surnames amongst Portuguese Jews
There are lists of claimed Sephardic surnames that include all 100 of the 100 most common surnames in Portugal today, and 99 of the 100 most common surnames in Spain.
It is reported that the most common surnames of people accused in Portuguese Inquisition documents of being Jewish are:
| Surname | Number of People |
| Rodrigues | 453 |
| Nunes | 229 |
| Mendes | 224 |
| Lopes | 282 |
| Miranda | 190 |
| Gomes | 184 |
| Henriques | 174 |
| Costa | 138 |
| Fernandes | 132 |
| Pereira | 124 |
| Dias | 124 |
These are also common names amongst Portuguese Old Christians. Also, remember that surnames were not fixed and could change from generation to generation. It would be ridiculous for someone to carry a surname that might draw negative attention. There is no such thing as a Sephardic surname. You need genealogical evidence.
In Spain and Portugal there seems to be a myth that Jews adopted surnames from trees and fruit. I suspect most surnames were probably adopted from godparents at the original baptisms, but I don’t know.
I am working on making Portuguese Inquisition records more accessible here.
Given/First Names
Various Jewish communities around the world have naming traditions. So, for example some Ashkenazi communities will name a child after a recently deceased relative, whilst some (not Western) Sephardic and Mizrahi/Magrebi Jewish communities name the child for a living one. Some communities have very fixed systems with the first children named after specific grandparents.
Within practising Jewish communities, a boy or man who is very sick may be given the second given name Haim (‘life’, in Hebrew) to confuse the Angel of Death. I am not clear if women were given the name Chaya (female of Haim). The records are much more interested in men, which always strikes me as unjust as it was the women who kept the show on the road.
I am not aware of evidence that the Western Sephardim – who mostly had little knowledge of Judaism during the sixteenth and seventeen centuries – knew or followed these tradition. Anyway, most of them had Christian rather than Hebrew names.
On embracing Judaism in Amsterdam it has been argued that many first generation male returners took the name Abraham, with their sons being Isaac. I am not clear if it is claimed that first generation women became Sarah. I am not entirely persuaded by all this. Maybe it is what happened for a period in early 17th Century Amsterdam. In my family the male names David and Daniel, Jewish heros, tend to repeat down the generations.
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