Surnames of Georgian Jews: Historical and Linguistic Aspects

Abstract

The article provides an analysis of several aspects of the corpus of surnames used by Jews who lived after the end of the Middle Ages in the territory that today corresponds to the Republic of Georgia. One section covers historical aspects: the earliest attestations and their exact status and the period when the use of surnames became stabilized. The next two sections discuss morphological aspects: the endings found in the surnames and historical, linguistic, and social explanations of the distribution observed, compound names, names with demonymic suffixes, and those based on hypocoristic forms of given names (a detailed coverage of methods of constructing such forms is also provided). In the remaining sections, the reader will find an analysis of phonetic peculiarities found in Georgian Jewish surnames, the types of surnames with their statistical distribution, as well as the description of surnames that were not created in Georgia but were brought as ready-made forms by Jews who migrated during the 19th–20th centuries to Georgia from other territories.