Most Jewish surnames in Austria and the lands of the old empire are younger than people expect. They date largely from a single decree, issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1787, which required Jewish families to adopt fixed German names. That history explains why so many Jewish surnames sound German, why different branches of one family may carry unrelated names, and why the records of the generation before 1787 look different. This guide explains the decree, what it produced and how to use it in research. It is a historical overview, and holdings of records are covered in our post on Jewish and Protestant records.
Before 1787
For much of Jewish history in Central Europe, surnames were not in common use. A person was known by a given name and the name of the father, as in David ben Joseph, or by a nickname or place. Permanent family names were not required, which means that for an ancestor born before the 1780s the usual identifier is a patronymic or a byname, and the same man may be recorded differently in different documents.
The decree
On 23 July 1787, five years after the Edict of Tolerance, Joseph II issued a decree known as the Patent concerning Jewish names, which required Jews to bear German first names and family names. According to the Habsburger.net account, applicants chose from an alphabetical register of permitted names, and the surnames were not to be distinguishable from German ones, since the policy was meant to promote integration. Imperial decrees in November and December 1787, supplemented in March 1799, required Jews of the empire, including Bukovina, to choose personal names from lists of 121 male and 37 female names. The lists included German forms of biblical names, a few German Christian names and a small number of Yiddish ones.
The decree applied across the Habsburg lands, so its effects are visible in records from Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Hungary and Bukovina as well as in the territory of present-day Austria.
Chosen and assigned names
The names were meant to be chosen, subject to approval by officials. In practice, the Habsburger.net account explains, applicants could not always raise the money for the names they wanted, and names were then assigned by the administration. Scholar Alexander Beider, quoted by Jewish Currents, writes that if a Jew had not chosen a name, one was assigned, and that the choice depended on an official’s imagination. Some assigned names were insulting. The same sources describe a range of common types: names taken from the Bible, such as Levy and Hirsch, names from colours, such as Roth and Schwarz, names referring to Holy Land fruit, such as Teitelbaum, and names for professions or places, such as Kaufmann and Biermann. Others were descriptive, such as Redlich (honest) and Freundlich (friendly).
A surname therefore tells you less about a family’s occupation, origin or beliefs than you might assume. It records the choice, or the assignment, made at one moment by one family and one official. Treat popular stories about particular names as folklore until a document supports them.
What it means for your research
- Expect a break around 1787. Ancestors born before the decree may appear under patronymics, and the link to a fixed surname may need a record from the 1780s or 1790s.
- Do not assume relatives share a surname. Brothers could be registered under different surnames, especially where the names were assigned.
- Watch the first names. The official lists of German first names mean that a Hebrew or Yiddish name used in the community may differ from the name in civil records.
- Allow for later changes. Names continued to change in later generations, through migration, assimilation and other pressures, so the name in an 1900 record may not be the one a grandfather used.
Questions to ask of a surname
- Is the name one of the common types, such as a colour, a biblical name, a trade or a place?
- Do other families in the same town carry names of the same type, which might suggest a batch assigned at once?
- Does the family appear under a different name in an earlier or later record?
- Does the first name match the official lists, or does a Hebrew or Yiddish form appear in community records?
These questions do not prove anything, but they stop you from reading too much into a name that was fixed by an official.
A worked example
Invented example: Consider an invented family named Teitelbaum from a small town in Galicia. A record from the early nineteenth century gives the father as Moses Teitelbaum, and a record from the 1770s in the same community names a Moshe ben Aron without a surname. The two are plausible matches, but you would not link them without further evidence, such as matching sons, a shared residence or a tax list that links the names. The surname itself, a name for a tree associated with the Holy Land, tells you something about the 1787 choice, not about where the family came from before. This is a made-up family used to show the method.
Where the records are
Vienna’s Jewish vital records for 1835 to 1938 are listed in the FamilySearch catalogue, and the Jewish community in Vienna holds registers on site. Other communities in the provinces, and the records of the empire’s other regions, are held by their own archives. Our post on non-Catholic records lists the holders, and the Vienna guide covers residence files. Search for spelling variants with care, since names were transliterated across several languages, and see our spelling variants guide.
For the history behind the decree, the Habsburger.net article, By your leave, my name is is a readable introduction.
A note on sources and care
Records for Jewish families from 1938 to 1945 are fragmentary because of persecution, expulsion and murder, and some researchers approach this history with personal pain. If your research touches those years, expect gaps and consider contacting the relevant community or archive directly. Where family history intersects with legal rights, such as a possible route to Austrian citizenship, our citizenship guide gives general information, and the relevant authority sets the requirements.
Where to go next
Read the Austrian genealogy guide for the overall method, and the surname origins guide for the wider picture of how Austrian names formed. If DNA testing may help you connect with relatives, see our DNA overview.
