Offensive names.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, central and eastern European Jews were compelled to adopt surnames and pass them on to their children. While most readily obeyed the directive and were allowed to choose their own names and naturally took those with pleasing sounds and connotations, those who were reluctant to comply and others who occupied a comparatively low status in sane communities often had uncomplimentary and even ludicrous names imposed on them by petty officials assigned by their respective governments to register their names. A body of tradition emerged that relates how some overworked and underpaid German and Austrian officials found in this commission lucrative opportunities for graft by extorting money to register or assign pleasant sounding names.

The most attractive names--those derived from gems and flowers (Rosenberg, Blumenthal, Goldberg, etc.)--are said to have commanded the highest prices, while penniless Jews were given highly unflattering names designed to disparage and inflict suffering. In some places officials, given precious little time to process the registrations or enjoined to avoid a duplication of names, resorted to unique and ingenious designations, coining names from ordinary words or even phrases.

Dislike of individual Jews or Jews in general seems to have played a key role in the tradition of arbitrary name assignment, accounting for the greater number of such names on record. To illustrate the extent of the imagery allegedly applied by prejudiced and unscrupulous officials, and to suggest how extremely unpleasant they must have been to the families they were given to, I have listed below, with their English translations, some of the more ludicrous of these names. Many of these names were recorded in the several writings of Karl Emil Franzos (1848-1904), a Galician-Jewish belletrist from Czernowitz (in Bukovina, in the present Ukraine) (1); and some were given by Curtis Adler in a 1940 issue of Israel's Messenger, (2) while others were sent to me in personal correspondence.

We may reasonably assume that some of the names on my list are not authentic, but others can be considered genuine since they're known to have been borne by real persons, probably descendants of their recipients, and a few are even still in use. Some authorities on European Jewish names have narrowed the incidence of the more ludicrous naming to a comparative handful of malicious officials in the Polish sections of Prussia and Austria, especially Galicia and, to some extent, both sections of Bukovina. (3) The preponderance of German names on the list probably reflects the limitations imposed on the naming officials as representatives of German-speaking suzerainties. Here are the names:

Affenkraut              monkey cabbage
Afterduft               rectal smell
Aftergeruch             rectal smell
Armenfreurnd            friend of the poor
Ausfresser              mischief maker
Bettelarm               destitute
Beutelschneider         pickpocket, swindler
Bloeder                 stupid
Borges                  money lender (?)
Butterfass              butter barrel
Butterweich             soft-hearted (lit. 'soft as butter')
Drach                   dragon
Drachenblut             dragon's blood
Dupa or Dupsky          rear end (Polish)
Durst                   Thirst
Elephant                elephant
Eselkopf, Eselkaupt     donkey's or ass's head
Fresser                 glutton
Galgenstrick            rogue (lit. 'gallow's noose')
Galgenvogel             vulture (lit. 'gallow's bird')
Garfinkel               carbuncle
Geldeschrank            money chest
Geschwur                abcess, boil, running sore
Getreide                grain (a dealer in grain?)
Gewurz                  spice (a dealer in spices?)
Gleichgewicht           equilibrium
Goldgraber              golddigger
Goldlust                lust for gold
Gottlos                 Godless or impious
Grabscheid              spade (for a grave digger)
Groberklotz             a crude or boorish fellow (lit. coarse log')
Heuschreck              grasshopper
Hintergesitz            rear end
Honig(mann)             honey (for a salesman of honey?)
Honigwachs              honey wax
Hunger                  hunger
Hungerleider            starveling, needy wretch, poor devil
Kanalgeruch             canal or sewer sinell (or possibly smelly pipe)
Kanalgitter             sewer cover
Karfunkel               carbuncle
Katzenellenbogen        cat's elbow
Kirschrot, Kirschrut    cherry red
Kohlkopt                cabbage head
Kratzer                 scratcher
Krautkopf               cabbage head
Kuratz                  excrement (in Croatian)
Kussemich               kiss me
Ladstockschwinger(?)    someone who inflicts a swinging blow with a
                        ramrod (?)
Lumpe                   hoodlum, scoundrel
Maschindendraht         machine thread or wire
Maultier                mule
Maulwurf                mole
Muttermilch             mother's milk
Nachgeshirr             chamber pot
Nachtkafer              nightbug
Nachtschweiss           night sweat
Nashorn                 rhinoceros
Niedergesass            lower ass
Niemand                 nobody
Nierenstein             kidney stone
Nothleider              beggar
Nussknacker             nutcracker
Ochsenschwanz           oxtail
Pfeffer                 pepper
Pferd                   horse
Pisoheles               urinator
Pitschpatsch            scoundrel who should get boxed on his ears
Pore                    pig (Rumanian)
Profitlich              profitable
Puderbeutel             powder bag
Pulverbestandteil       gunpowder particle or ingredient
Raubvogel               bird of prey
Reberiwurzel            vine stock
Rettig                  radish
Rindskopf               ox (or cow) head
Salz(mann)              saltmaker or salt merchant
Sauerstrom              sour discharge
Sauger                  sucker (in the sense of nipple or teat)
Saumagen                sow's paunch
Schames                 genitals
Schamrot(e)             blusher
Schmalz                 grease or lard, animal fat
Schmetterling           butterfly
Schnapser               heavy drinker
Schondufter             sweet smeller
Schulklopfer            an assiduous attendant of a synagogue
Schwefel                sulphur or brimstone (Does this
                        allude to the Devil?)
Schweinburg (?)         pigsty (?)
Schweinigel             hedgehog or swine
Schweissloch            sweat hole
Singmirwas              sing something to me
Susskind                sweet child
Sussmann, Sussmann      sweet man
Taschengreifer          pickpocket
Temperaturwechsel       change of temperature
Teufel                  devil
Tintenpulver            ink powder
Tod(t)schlager          murderer
Totenkopf               death's head
Treppengelaender        stairway railing or banister
Trinker                 drunkard
Veilcheuduft            scent of violets
Wauzenknicker           louse cracker (or one who kills
                        lice with his fingernails)
Wasserstrahl            discharge of urine
Weinglas                wine glass
Weisheitsborn           well of wisdom
Wohlgeruch              good smeller
Zentnerschwer           hundredweight
Zimmt                   cinnamon (a dealer in cinnamon?)
Zucker(manu)            sugar merchant
Zuckersuss              sugar sweet
Zweibeldurft            onion thirst
Zweibelsuss             onion sweet
Zwergl (?)              dwarf

Some of these names, of course, might have borne a distorted allusion to the condition of life or some physical attribute or eccentricity of the individual so named. An outdoorsman, for example, might have been named Veilchenduft (scent of violets) or Lilienthal (valley of lilies).

Kohlkopt could well have been a stupid fellow, and Butterfass might have been excessively overweight, while Eselkaupt may have made an ass of himself in attempting to convince the naming official to assign him a better name. Sussman was probably a seller of sweets.

Kanalgeruch might have lived near a foul-smelling canal or emitted an unpleasant odor of his own. (4) Karfunkel might have been a "pain in the neck" though the word literally refers to one variety of precious stone. (Some authorities on Jewish names, like Albert Parry, have held that this name was not coined by central European anti-Semites at all but by Jewish jewelers from a beautiful red gem.) (5) Rebecca Kussemich likely appealed to the more prurient side of the naming official. Curtis Adler tells of a Miss Himmelblau (sky blue), a pretty blue-eyed student from Cracow, and of Ernst Profitlich, an ambitious young fellow who worked hard to support his family. (6) Mr. Pulverbestandteil was thought to be "worth no more than a shot of gunpowder." (7) Temperaturwechsel was the name of an attractive young dancer. (8)

The late John Leighly, of the University of California, Berkeley, once recalled having found Aftergeruch in a 1950s French onomastic journal. The story that the name had been assigned, in the late 18th century, to an Alsatian-Jewish family. One member of that family later became a personal physician to the Austro-Hungarian emperor. In that position, he was ennobled and told that if he wished he might change his name. He replied, "I have brought honor to my horrible name, and shall keep it." (9)

Katzenellenbogen is often thought to be a joke, but The New York Times, back in 1881, (10) reported on a distinguished old German Gentile family that had borne this name for several hundred years. According to N. Pearlroth, another authority on Jewish names, the name came from that of a Hessian town and may have derived originally from Cattimalibochi, a combination of three ancient Germanic tribes. He recalled the never-confirmed legend of Saul Katzenellenbogen, who, for one night, was named king of Poland and whose descendants adopted the name Wahl that was later Polonized as Wol (ox). (11)

According to Professor Leighly, an expert on German names, there are two German words expressed in English as powder. These are pulver (from the Latin pulver) or the utilitarian powders (e.g. baking powder, gunpowder, etc.) and puder (from the French poudre or 'powders used in the toilet' (e.g., hair powder, face powder, etc.). Puderbeutel probably referred to "the bag through the meshes of which the powder was applied to the skin or hair." (12)

Leighly literally translated Schulklopfer as 'school knocker' or 'beater' and suggested that it might refer to the infliction of corporal punishment on pupils. But then he thought that, since Schul is the Yiddish word for synagogue, Klopfer could also refer to knocking on a door, and thus schulklopfer could have been someone who answered the knock on a synagogue door. (13)

A few names are said to have derived from officials' misunderstanding of the replies to their question, "What is your name?" Theodore Gaster, in his brief article on names in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, reported at least two examples of this:

A Jew who stated in Yiddish that his name was "poshet Yankele" (simply Yankele) was promptly registered as Yankele Poshet, and a family who remarked in Hebrew, when asked their surname, "Ano lo neda" (we don't know) were entered as Neuda. (14)

In many cases, though, there was probably no connection between name and person. One of the most unusual of these imposed names, alleged to have been given to a Viennese family, is Kanalfeustergitterbestandteil (literally, 'a grated sewer cover'), (15) which is said to have been seen, in a somewhat modified form, in 1912 on a signpost in front of a store in the Jewish section of Cracow. (16)

On Polish estates in the 19th and early 20th centuries, "witty" aristocrats were known to have given their peasants names derived from parts of the anatomy, particularly the genitals and their functions, while some of the streets of small Polish towns and villages were also named for such parts of the human body.

On the other hand, in the czarist-occupied section of Poland, some of the most wretched Jews were given names borne by the highest Polish aristocracy, ostensibly to embarrass the latter. These two practices were done away with a few years before the Second World War, when a law was enacted in Poland that offensive names could be changed at no cost. Until that time, nearly any kind of change was costly and complicated. (17)

Many of the names on my list, authenticated or otherwise, and this name-giving practice itself, have given rise to a body of anecdotal material such as the examples that follow:

Theodore Gruen of New York City gave this account of his mother's family name, Rothensies:

"When the Jews were asked to select German family names, nay ancestor appeared before the mayor of the village [of Zwingenberg in Hesse] and replied in local Hessian German to the mayor's question as to what name he wanted: 'rothensies' (raten sies), which means 'you guess it.' When nay ancestor then asked the mayor what the new name would be, the mayor answered 'I put down exactly what you said--Rothensies.' All nay ancestor's protestations did not make the capricious or perhaps anti-Semitic mayor change his mind." (18)

This is the rendition of a family narrative that may be the prototype of the popular Jewish jest about Ephraim, the practical joker, who, when asked his present name by the registrar, answers "Ich weiss net. Rate, sie" (I don't know. Guess it) and then is given the name Ratensies. (19)

In another version, Ephraim may simply be asking for the official's advice in choosing a name (replying "raten", which also has the meaning of advice or counsel). (20)

A variation of that story involves a similar word, roten (to redden or make blush), and here the naming official, referring to the timidity of a name seeker, observes that the latter is clearly blushing and records his name as Rotensies (he's blushing). (21) Or else the name seeker simply misunderstands that remark and assumes that this is to be his new name (another popular theme in name acquisition lore.)

Mrs. Martin Brock, of Oakland, California, recalled her uncle Alwin Pitschpatsch, a well-to-do Berlin furrier, whose name gave rise to ridicule. Patsch is, strictly speaking in Yiddish parlance, a 'box on the ear' and Pitschaptsch means that one is a scoundrel, and thus each ear should be hit. (22) For a considerable bribe he arranged for a change of name to Pietsch (peye/ ehtch), while his brother, a clothier, had his name simply shortened to Pitsch. (23)

A family living near Braunschweig requested a name to designate their home town but were forced to accept a registrar's selection of Schweinigel ('hedgehog' or 'swine') for its play on the second syllable of that place name. (24)

An unsuccessful attempt to change a distasteful name was reported by Ada Kinsbrunner of Montreal:

"In the town of Vatra-Dornei in the Dukedom of Bukowina lived a family by the name of Porc. You can imagine how cruelly the children were teased. When the father sought to change their name by applying to the District office he was told 'the porc being one of the most useful animals there is no reason for a change.'" (25)

Rudolph Kleinpaul, an authority on German-Jewish personal names, is usually credited with the first printed rendition of the most often told of the "offensive naming" stories, paraphrased as follows: Two friends meet after their naming to compare notes. One had been given a very good name Weisheit (wisdom), but the other had been labeled Schweisshund (bloodhound or, literally, 'profusely perspiring dog').

Appalled at his friend's inelegant name, Weisheit asks why he didn't follow his advice and pay a sufficient bribe to the naming official. "Gott in Hirmiel," the other answers, "I paid half my fortune to get the "w" into my name so I wouldn't be called a dirty dog." (26) (This tale has been recounted in several of the standard texts on personal names, notably Harrison's Surnames of the United Kingdom, Cecil Henry L'Estrange Ewen's A History of Surnames of the British Isles, and H. L. Mencken's The American Language, fourth edition.)

A variant of Kleinpaul's tale was given to me by Ernst Maass, the U.N. librarian:

"Two daughters and a father around 1812 in Prussia are forced to choose a family name. The girls ask him to 'get a nice name for us.' For a long time he's gone and they're getting nervous. He finally comes home looking very sad. 'So what's our new name, Papa?'

'Schweissheimer,' he says (schweiss means 'sweat').

'But that's a horrible name. Why couldn't you have gotten us a nice name like Rosenberg?'

'If you know the truth," he said, "how much I paid for just the 'w.'" (27)

Then there's the story told of how the great grandfather of Yiddish writer Shalom Asch persuaded an official with a purse full of ducats to remove the r from the name that he was to be given. Arsch is just what it sounds like. (28)

That even in Russia the Jews fared no better with their names can be revealed by this story told by John Robboy, a Cleveland, Ohio, physician:

"By edict of the czar, all Jews were to assume surnames. Those able to pay a good bribe were given beautiful names. The poor, unable to give bribes, were given ugly names.

This is how my forebears got the name Rabei, which, in the Ukrainian language, means a freckled person or anything with mixed coloring. When myself and my brothers and sisters grew up and became sophisticated, we Russianized the name to Ryaboy. Then, upon reaching the States, an Americanized cousin thought it should be Robboy, and that is how it came to be." (29)

Among others fortunate enough to be able to change their offensive names later in life was a Mr. Lugner (liar) who, according to Maass, changed his name to Amitai (man who tells the truth). (30)

Not all offensive name bearers were disheartened by their names. While not exactly glorying in his, a cashier in a local Chernovitsy theater accepted the name Geschwur ('ulcer' or 'abscess') with good nature and laughed off all the rude jokes to which he was exposed. (31) But I suspect that his reaction was rare. Few such name bearers were so insensitive or indifferent as not to have felt hurt by, not so much the names themselves, but the way they were bestowed. The names were but reminders of the sentiments about Jews held by some of the government namers. Of course, some of the bearers may not have been aware of the meaning of the names they were given.

How many such names were given in the 19th century or how handicapping they were in dealing with others or how many of these have been borne by succeeding generations is unknowable. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Jews felt comparatively little attachment to names arbitrarily bestowed on them by others, especially if, having little to do with their Gentile neighbors, they had little need to refer to them. For the record and in occasional dealings with the larger community, they would use their assigned names, but among their fellow Jews in the ghetto, their traditional name patterns (the use of the patronymic, occupational titles, and house signs) were usually sufficient. It's also likely that when the bearers had the opportunity to change them, as when they moved to another country, those with the more offensive names replaced them with apparent little concern and less self-consciousness. (32) We know that Jewish immigrants were more inclined than most other peoples to change their names.

Notes:

(1.) Especially in his essay "Namenstudien."

(2.) Curtis Adler, "Where These Fancy Names Come From," Israel's Messenger, 37, July 12, 1940, reprinted from an article in Better English, Dec. 11, 1939.

(3.) Zvonko R. Rode, Washington, D.C., personal communication, March 13, 1967.

(4.) According to Elsie Lacks, San Francisco, CA, personal communication, March 14, 1967, Friedrich Kanalgeruch was a Berlin singing master.

(6.) Adler, op. cit.

(7.) Ibid.

(8.) Ibid.

(9.) John Leighly, Berkeley, CA, personal communication, Jan. 10, 1983.

(10.) New York Times, Aug. 13, 1881, p. 3.

(11.) N. Pearlroth in one of his "What Does Your Name Mean?" columns in the Jewisk Post, June 22, 1945.

(12.) Leighly, op cit.

(13.) Ibid.

(14.) 1942, 8, p. 96-97.

(15.) A. Kunst, New York, NY, personal communication, June 3, 1963.

(16.) William B. Jurim, San Francisco, CA, personal communication, June 23, 1967.

(17.) Kunst, op cit.

(18.) Theodore Gruen, New York, NY, personal communication, June 23, 1967.

(19.) Adler, op cit.

(20.) Henry Harrison, Surnames of the United Kingdom, 2, London, 1918, p. xiii.

(21.) Dornheim, Brooklyn, NY, personal communication, March 13, 1967.

(22.) Mrs. Martin Broch, Oakland, CA, personal communication, March 13, 1967.

(23.) Ibid.

(24.) Walter Heinemann, M.D., New York, NY, personal communication, March 12, 1967.

(25.) Ada Kinsbrunner, Montreal, Quebec, personal communications, June 15 and August 20, 1969.

(26.) Rudolph Kleinpaul, Menscken und Volkernamen Etymologische Streifzuge auf dem Gerbeite der Eigennamen, Leipsig, 1885, p. 118.

(27.) Ernst Maass, New York, NY, personal communication, August 23, 1967.

(28.) Benjamin J. Oriel, New York, NY, personal communication, March 10, 1967.

(29.) Dr. John Robboy, M.D., Cleveland, Ohio, personal communication, January 25, 1967.

(30.) Maass, op cit.

(31.) Kinsbrunner, op cit.

(32.) Benzion C. Kaganoff, "Jewish Surnames Through the Ages," Commentary, September, 1956, p. 249-59.

Robert M. Rennick

Prestonsburg, Kentucky