The vocabulary of this subject is drawn from Hebrew, Aramaic, Portuguese, Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Dutch and Italian, and a reader can meet six unfamiliar words in a single paragraph.
This page explains them all, alphabetically. Where a term matters for research rather than only for understanding, we say why.
A
Anno Mundi (AM) — “in the year of the world”. The Hebrew calendar’s count from the traditional date of creation. Hebrew documents give years in letters, usually omitting the thousands, so a date reading תרע”ה is 5675 (1914–15), not 675. See also minyan shtarot.
Anusim (אנוסים; singular anus) — Hebrew, “the coerced”. A halachic category concerning Jews forced to convert under duress, and the obligations owed to them. It is a legal term about the person compelled, not an ethnic label, and not a statement about descendants. See bnei anusim.
Aram Zoba — the Hebrew name for Aleppo, used in rabbinic and community sources.
Ascamot (also haskamot) — the written statutes of a Sephardi congregation, governing membership, worship, charity, discipline and behaviour. London’s first ascamot required two charity boxes, one for Terra Santa and one for Cativos.
Asiento — the Spanish crown’s contract to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies. During the Iberian Union (1580–1640) it passed largely into Portuguese hands, and several holders were New Christians or from New Christian families.
Ashkenazi / Ashkenazim — Jews of the German lands and, later, eastern Europe, and their descendants. From Ashkenaz, the biblical name (Genesis 10:3) repurposed to mean Germany. Not a denomination but a regional tradition, with its own rite, customs and Hebrew pronunciation.
Auto-da-fé — Portuguese, “act of faith”. The public ceremony at which the Inquisition announced its sentences. Not itself an execution, though executions followed it.
Autosomal DNA — the “family finder” test, inherited from all ancestral lines. Useful for about five or six generations and for identifying living cousins. It cannot answer a question about 1492.
B
Beldiyin — Moroccan Muslim families descended from Jews who did not return to Judaism after the Almohad forced conversions of 1130. They remained socially distinct and some still carry Jewish surnames. Arguably the first Marranos, three and a half centuries before Spain.
Beth din (בית דין) — the rabbinical court. In the Ottoman and Islamic world it held legal jurisdiction over personal status, so its registers cover marriage, divorce, inheritance and property — and replace civil registration entirely for those centuries.
Bnei anusim (בני אנוסים) — “children of the coerced”. A modern coinage for descendants of forced converts. It does not carry the classical halachic standing that anusim does, and using it asserts the very thing usually at issue.
BOA — the Ottoman State Archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi) in Istanbul.
C
CAHJP — the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. Holds the community archives of a great many Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, including İzmir’s and Mogador’s — often the records are here rather than in the country they came from.
Capitulations — treaties granting European powers the right to protect their nationals within the Ottoman Empire. The legal basis for Franco status.
Carreira da Índia — the Portuguese royal shipping route to India.
Cativos — Portuguese, “captives”. One of two obligations established by the Amsterdam Portuguese community in 1616: the redemption of Jewish captives, chiefly those held for ransom by the Knights of St John at Malta and by the Barbary corsairs. See Terra Santa.
Chueta (also Xueta) — the descendants of Mallorcan Jews converted in 1391 and 1435, held apart by Mallorcan society for five centuries. Fifteen surnames, including Aguiló, Bonnín, Forteza, Pinya, Segura, Tarongí and Valentí. Originally a slur, now largely reclaimed.
Cizye — the Ottoman poll tax on non-Muslims. Its registers name taxpayers and are sometimes organised by synagogue.
Code Noir — the French colonial legal code of 1685, whose first article expelled all Jews from the French islands within three months. A Louisiana edition followed in 1724. It governs the Sephardi history of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Saint-Domingue and New Orleans.
Congregantes — in Suriname, a subordinate category of membership in the Portuguese Jewish community, into which Eurafrican Jews were placed. Contrast jehidim.
Conversos — Spanish, “converts”. Jews who converted to Christianity in Iberia, and their descendants. Broadly descriptive and reasonably neutral; it does not distinguish forced from voluntary conversion.
Copiadores — the letter copybooks of the Amsterdam Portuguese community, from 1700, in which outgoing correspondence was copied. London instead copied letters directly into its Mahamad minute books.
Cristão-novo / cristão-velho — Portuguese, New Christian and Old Christian. The Spanish forms are cristiano nuevo and cristiano viejo.
D
Degredado — Portuguese, a person sentenced to exile. Degredados were used to populate Cape Verde, São Tomé and other Portuguese possessions, and New Christians were over-represented among them.
Despachos — the departure records of the Amsterdam and London Sephardi communities: who was funded to travel, where, and at what cost. Often the only record of an emigration to the Caribbean or the Americas.
Dhimmi — the protected but subordinate legal status of Jews and Christians under Islamic rule, entailing the jizya and various restrictions.
Digitarq — the online catalogue of the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, through which the Portuguese Inquisition records are searched.
Dönmeh — descendants of the followers of Shabbetai Zevi who converted to Islam after 1666 and maintained a distinct communal identity, principally in Salonica and later Istanbul.
Dotar — the Santa Companhia de Dotar Órfãs e Donzelas Pobres, founded at Amsterdam in 1615 to provide dowries by lottery to poor girls of the Nação. Its applications name parents, birthplaces and residences, making it one of the few Sephardi record sets that is entirely about women.
E
Emancipatieregisters — the Suriname emancipation registers of 1863, naming every enslaved person freed, with age, plantation, former owner and the surname assigned or adopted. Digitised, indexed and free.
Endogamy — marriage within a defined group. Sephardi communities were often highly endogamous, which makes DNA matching easier and name-based identification much harder.
Estado da Índia — the Portuguese State of India, the administrative structure governing Portuguese Asia from Mozambique to Macau, seated at Cochin from 1505 and Goa from 1530.
État civil — French civil registration. The colonial état civil of Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane is held at ANOM and largely digitised.
F
Finta — a community tax assessment, effectively a census of householders by wealth. See imposta.
Firman — an Ottoman imperial decree.
Forros — in São Tomé, the descendants of the early freed population.
Francos (also Señores Francos) — “Frankish gentlemen”. Jews of Italian, Iberian or other European origin who settled in the Ottoman lands — Aleppo, Damascus, İzmir — and retained European nationality under the Capitulations, escaping the jizya and falling under consular rather than Ottoman jurisdiction. Their records are in European archives, not local ones. The Picciotto family of Aleppo, Austrian consuls for generations, are the best-documented example. Contrast Levantinos.
G
Gabbai — a communal officer or treasurer. Amsterdam and London each appointed a gabbai for Terra Santa, responsible for receiving and remitting the money.
Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) — the accepted professional standard: reasonably exhaustive research; complete source citation; analysis and correlation of evidence; resolution of conflicting evidence; and a soundly reasoned written conclusion.
Get (גט) — a Jewish bill of divorce. Its drafting requires precise name forms, which is why kinuim lists exist.
Grana (Hebrew Gorneyim) — the Livornese Jews of Tunis, from Gorna, Livorno. From 1710 they maintained a community entirely separate from the indigenous Twansa — separate rabbi, court, synagogues, cemetery and registers — until 1899. Their registers are labelled “the Portuguese community”.
H
Hakham — a Sephardi rabbi or sage. Hakham Bashi was the Ottoman Empire’s chief rabbi, and communities across the empire corresponded with his office.
Haketía — the Judeo-Spanish of northern Morocco — Tangier, Tetouan, Larache — blending fifteenth-century Spanish with Hebrew and Arabic. Because it is close to Spanish, Haketía speakers integrated unusually fast in Spanish-speaking countries.
Halacha — Jewish religious law.
Halukka — the organised charitable support remitted from the diaspora to the Jewish communities of the Holy Land, on which those communities substantially depended.
Haplogroup — a branch of the human genetic tree, defined by shared mutations. Y-DNA haplogroups can place a paternal lineage geographically and historically.
Hara (harat al-yahud) — the Jewish quarter in Arabic-speaking cities. See mellah.
Haskalah — the Jewish Enlightenment. Its central and eastern European adherents admired the integrated Western Sephardim, which is one source of Ashkenazi traditions of Sephardi descent.
Herem — excommunication, or a formal communal ban. Herem proceedings appear in Mahamad minute books and are informative about individuals and disputes.
Hijri — the Islamic lunar calendar, counting from 622 CE. Not to be confused with the Rumi calendar, which is solar — see Rumi.
I
Imposta — the community tax levied by a Sephardi congregation on its members, assessed by wealth. The assessment lists are effectively repeated censuses of householders and are among the best sources for establishing presence in a place at a date.
Italkim — the Italian Jewish communities, neither Sephardi nor Ashkenazi, with their own ancient rite. Names such as Calò, Di Segni, Piperno, Sonnino, Ascoli, Ancona, Morpurgo and Finzi are Italkim, and frequently appear on Sephardi surname lists in error.
J
Jadid al-Islam — “new Muslims”. The Jews of Mashhad, Persia, forcibly converted to Islam in the Allahdad of 1839, who lived for over a century as outward Muslims and secret Jews. The closest analogue anywhere to the Iberian anusim, arising independently.
Jehidim — full members of a Sephardi congregation, with voting rights and full status. Contrast congregantes.
Jizya — the poll tax levied on non-Muslims under Islamic rule. Escaping it was a principal motive for acquiring European protection — see Francos.
Jodensavanne — “the Jews’ savannah”, the autonomous Jewish agricultural settlement on the Suriname River, founded in the 1680s. A plantation settlement worked by enslaved Africans.
Judaizante / judaizer — the Inquisition’s charge against a New Christian accused of secretly practising Judaism. It is an accusation in a proceeding, not a finding of fact.
Judeo-Arabic — the Arabic dialects written and spoken by Jews across North Africa and the Middle East, generally in Hebrew characters.
Judeo-Spanish — see Ladino.
K
Kahal (plural kehalim) — a congregation. In Salonica, the twenty-nine historic kehalim were each named for their founders’ place of origin — Sefarad, Kastiya, Portugal, Lisbon, Evora, Italia, Sisilia, Pulia — so the congregation a family belonged to is a documented statement of where they came from.
Karaites — a Jewish movement rejecting rabbinic tradition in favour of scripture alone. A separate community with separate records; the Karaites of Egypt succeeded in removing their vital records, unlike the Rabbanites.
Ketubah (plural ketubot) — the Jewish marriage contract, in Aramaic to a fixed formula. The single richest document in Sephardic genealogy: it names the groom with his father and often grandfather, the bride with her father and sometimes two further generations, the witnesses, the date, the place, the dowry, and the custom under which it was drawn.
Kinuim — the standard pairings of Hebrew and vernacular names used in legal documents such as a get, where the exact form of a name matters.
Kriston — the Luso-African, nominally Catholic trading population of the Guinea rivers, descended from the lançados and African women.
L
Ladino (also Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo) — the language of the Eastern Sephardim, essentially fifteenth-century Spanish with Hebrew, Turkish and Greek elements, written in Hebrew characters. Printed in Rashi script and handwritten in Solitreo. See Haketía for the Moroccan form.
Lançados — Portuguese traders, many of them New Christians, who “threw themselves” among African societies on the Upper Guinea coast, lived outside Portuguese jurisdiction and married locally. Related term: tangomãos.
Levantinos — what the Western Sephardim called the Eastern Sephardim of the Ottoman lands. The reciprocal term was Francos.
Lettres patentes — royal letters granting a named individual exemption from a general prohibition. Some Jews remained in Saint-Domingue under such letters despite the Code Noir.
Limpieza de sangre — “purity of blood”. The Iberian investigations into ancestry required for public office, military orders, universities and licences to emigrate to the Indies. Witnesses testified about four grandparents and often further, so the files are genealogically rich. Note that the logic runs backwards: a successful investigation is what successful concealment looks like.
M
Ma’aravim — the Maghrebi Jews of Jerusalem, who in 1860 established a community separate from the Sephardim under Rabbi David Ben-Shimon.
Mahamad — the governing board of a Sephardi congregation. Its minute books record elections, admissions, fines, disputes, charity and correspondence, and are among the richest community sources.
Marrano — Spanish, of disputed etymology but probably from marrano, swine. Originally an insult. Used as a technical term by an older generation of scholars, now generally avoided, though some Portuguese communities have reclaimed it.
Megorashim — “the expelled”. The Iberian exiles who settled in North Africa, distinguished for centuries from the indigenous Toshavim by separate synagogues, customs and sometimes courts. In northern Morocco they spoke Haketía.
Meldadura — a memorial study or reading; the term appears in Sephardi communal records in connection with commemoration.
Meldezettel — Vienna’s residence registration forms, giving name, birth date and place, religion, occupation and previous address. Excellent for mobile merchant families.
Mellah — the Jewish quarter of a Moroccan city, from melah, salt. The first was at Fes-Jdid in 1438.
Millet — the Ottoman system under which each recognised religious community administered its own personal-status law. This is why community registers replace civil registration across the Ottoman world.
Minhag (plural minhagim) — custom. The body of practice distinguishing one Jewish tradition from another. A person follows the minhag of their father, which is a rule about religious practice and not about descent.
Minyan shtarot — the Seleucid era, “the era of contracts”, used for dating in some Eastern Jewish documents. It runs behind Anno Mundi by some three and a half millennia; if a date looks impossibly early, this is usually why.
Mizrahi — “Eastern”. Jews of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus — Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Kurdistan, Bukhara. Not Sephardi in the descent sense, though many follow the Sephardi rite and describe themselves as Sephardi. The term is contested.
Mohel — the practitioner who performs circumcision. His register is a private professional record, not a community register — which means a boy’s absence from it proves nothing.
Musta’arabim — “the Arabised”. The indigenous Arabic-speaking Jews of the Levant, present since antiquity and distinct from both the Sephardim who arrived after 1492 and the Francos.
N
Nação, A — “the Nation”. What the Western Sephardim called themselves: the Portuguese Jewish nation of Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Livorno and the Atlantic world.
New Christian — see cristão-novo. The term this site prefers, because it describes a documented legal status rather than an inferred belief.
Nharas — the women traders of the Guinea rivers, the Guinea-Bissau equivalent of the Senegalese signares.
Notarial records — in civil-law countries, the preserved records of contracts, wills, inventories, powers of attorney and partnerships. Frequently the only source for a legally excluded merchant population, as in colonial New Orleans and Saint-Domingue.
Nüfus defterleri — Ottoman population registers. The 1831 series records males only, without parents; from about 1878 they are systematic and name both parents.
Nüfus tezkeresi — the Ottoman identity card, giving birth year, religion, residence down to the house number, and usually both parents. Often found in family papers.
Nusach — the rite, or version of the prayer service. Nusach Sefard is not the Sephardi rite — it is an Ashkenazi liturgy with kabbalistic additions used by Hasidim, and confusing the two produces a great many false family traditions.
P
Papeles de Cuba — the section of the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, holding the administration of Spanish Louisiana and the Caribbean.
Paradesi — “foreigners”. The Jews of Cochin descended from later arrivals — from Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Persia, Iraq, Germany and Iberia — as distinct from the older Malabari community.
Parnas (plural parnassim) — a lay leader or warden of a congregation.
Patronymic — a name formed from the father’s. Hebrew ben, Aramaic bar, Arabic ibn and abu all mean “son of”. Many Iberian surnames are frozen patronymics: Rodrigues, Fernandes, Nunes, Lopes, Gomes.
Pekidei Kushta — the Officials of Constantinople, established in 1728 as the clearing house through which diaspora money for the Holy Land was channelled.
Processo — an Inquisition case file. Its structure — denunciation, arrest, inventory, the defendant’s genealogy, interrogations, sentence — makes it the best genealogical source that exists for New Christians.
R
Rashi script — a semi-cursive Hebrew typeface used for printed rabbinic texts and for printed Ladino. Learnable quickly.
Reconciliado — an Inquisition sentence: reconciled to the Church, with penances, confiscation and often imprisonment. Contrast relaxado.
Relaxado — “relaxed” to the secular arm, that is, handed over for execution. Relaxado en persona means in person; relaxado en estatua means burned in effigy, the person having died or escaped.
Rhodesli (Rodesli) — Jews of the island of Rhodes and their descendants, who emigrated in numbers to the Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa, Seattle and Los Angeles. After the deportation of the remaining community in 1944, the diaspora is much of what survives of it.
Romaniote — the Greek-speaking Jews of the Byzantine world, with their own rite and their own language, Yevanic. Older than the Sephardim and largely absorbed by them after 1492 — Istanbul’s community is substantially Romaniote beneath a Sephardi surface.
Rumi — the Ottoman civil calendar used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It counts from the Hijra but is solar, not lunar. Converting a Rumi date as though it were Hijri will put you several years out, and more errors come from this than from anything else in Ottoman research.
S
Sambenito (sanbenito) — the penitential garment worn by those sentenced by the Inquisition. The garments were afterwards hung in churches bearing the family names, perpetuating the stigma for generations — as at Santo Domingo in Palma.
Santo Ofício — the Holy Office; the Inquisition.
Sedaca — charity; the general charitable fund of a Sephardi congregation.
Sepharad (ספרד) — the Hebrew name for Spain, and by extension Iberia. It appears once in the Bible, at Obadiah 1:20, as an unidentified place of exile; the identification with Spain is a later Jewish tradition.
Sephardi / Sephardim — used in at least four distinct senses. This site uses the descent sense: Jews descended from the Jews of Spain and Portugal. See our page What We Mean by “Sephardic”.
Şer’iyye sicilleri (also sijill) — the Ottoman sharia court registers. Jews used the Islamic courts constantly, often preferring them because judgment came the same day, so these are a substantial and largely untouched source for named Jews.
Shadarim (sheluchei de-rabbanan, also shluchim) — emissaries sent from the communities of the Holy Land to collect funds across the diaspora. They carried news as well as appeals, and their visits are recorded in community minute books.
Shulchan Aruch — the code of Jewish law compiled by Joseph Caro, himself a child of the expulsion, at Safed in the sixteenth century. Sephardim follow it directly; Ashkenazim follow it with the glosses of Moses Isserles. This is why so many non-Iberian communities are called Sephardi.
Signares — the powerful mixed-race women traders of French Gorée and Saint-Louis in Senegal.
Slavenregisters — the Suriname slave registers, 1830–1863, recording enslaved people by name with births, deaths, sales and transfers. Digitised, indexed and free.
Solitreo — the handwritten form of Judeo-Spanish, heavily influenced by Arabic calligraphy. It is not recognisable to someone who reads modern printed Hebrew, and it is the hardest practical barrier in Sephardi research.
T
Tablillas — the boards hung in cathedrals listing those sentenced by the Inquisition. Several published lists of Inquisition victims derive from transcriptions of them.
Tahrir defterleri — Ottoman survey registers, fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, recording households and taxpayers. Generally “name, son of father” without surnames.
Talmud Torah — a community school; also the name of the united Portuguese congregation of Amsterdam from 1639.
Tangomãos — see lançados; the term carried more disapproval.
Tapu — Ottoman property deeds, significant from the later nineteenth century and naming the owner.
Temettüat — Ottoman income and property surveys of the nineteenth century.
Terra Santa — “the Holy Land”. One of two obligations established by the Amsterdam Portuguese community in 1616: the annual support of the Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias, recorded in annual lists of named recipients. See Cativos, halukka, shadarim.
Toshavim — “the residents”. The indigenous Jews of North Africa, present since antiquity and distinguished for centuries from the Megorashim who arrived after 1492.
Toponymic — a name formed from a place. Toledano, Laredo, Espinosa, Curiel and Belmonte are toponymic — and were borne by Christians from the same towns.
Tujjar as-sultan — “the sultan’s merchants”. The privileged Moroccan Jewish trading families licensed to conduct the crown’s foreign commerce, principally at Mogador.
Twansa (Touansa) — the indigenous Jews of Tunis, Judeo-Arabic-speaking, distinguished from the Livornese Grana from 1710 to 1899.
Tzaddik (plural tzaddikim) — a righteous man; in Morocco, a venerated rabbi whose tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Marrakech’s cemetery holds over six hundred.
V
Velho and Novo — “old” and “new”. The two historic burial grounds of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation in London.
Vermögensanmeldung — the 1938 property declaration required of every Jew in Austria holding assets above 5,000 Reichsmark. Obscene in intent and extraordinarily detailed in content: names, addresses, family, businesses, accounts.
Vilayet / sanjak — Ottoman administrative provinces and sub-provinces. Records are usually organised by them.
VOC — the Dutch East India Company, which founded the Cape settlement and ran the Dutch Asian trade.
W
WIC — the Dutch West India Company, which granted the Jewish settlement patents for Curaçao, Cayenne and the Pomeroon, ran Dutch Brazil, and briefly held Luanda.
Y
Y-DNA — DNA passed from father to son. The tool that works for questions at this depth, because a paternal lineage can be placed geographically and historically. See the Avotaynu DNA Foundation.
Yavan — the Hebrew name for Greece. Similarly Tzarfat for France and Edom for Christendom.
Yeshiva — a rabbinic academy.
Yevanic — the Greek-based language of the Romaniote Jews, now effectively extinct.
Yichus — lineage, and the standing it confers. The desire for yichus explains a good many traditions of descent from distinguished ancestors.
If we have missed a term you have met in the records, please tell us at [email protected] and we will add it.
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See also
What We Mean by “Sephardic” · Getting Started in Sephardic Genealogy · Sephardic Records: a Guide to the Documents · Sephardic Naming Traditions · Genealogical Standards