ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3359 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3359 ************************************ 26 Sep 2008 From: Julia Smith Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked about the name or for a Jewish woman of Sevilla in the late fifteenth century. You also asked what would happen to her name after she fled Sevilla in 1492 for Cochin, India: would she keep her name or take a South Indian name. This is what we found. The feminine given name was relatively common in late fifteenth century Spain, and was used by conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity, at least nominally, mostly in 1492); there is no reason to think that it was an exclusively Christian name. [1],[2] The masculine given name is found as a Jewish name throughout the Iberian peninsula. [3],[4],[5] It is an excellent choice for your father's name. The spelling is also found in Castilla. [6] The byname is found in the fifteenth century (in this period, spellings of names often appear with either b or v in similar positions); the spelling < de Saavedra> appears in 1540. [1],[7] The byname (which also appears as and among other forms) is a byname associated with a famous family in Spain (later Portugal and Italy). [8] By the late fifteenth century, a woman would only be described as in a very formal document written in Latin (like a will); a similarly formal document written in the vernacular would use or in place of . [5] Normally her name would be written as . To summarize: or would be a very formal documentary form of a name more likely to appear as or in late fifteenth century Spain. In the Spanish Jewish diaspora, most people don't seem to have changed their names on arriving in their new settings, though their names may be written down by the people around them in slightly different forms. [2],[8],[10] The children and grandchildren of European Jews seem to have adopted names more typical of native populations. However, in this case we are not certain how quickly the existing population of Jews integrated with the new European arrivals, and so cannot say how quickly the descendant of a European Jew might have adopted an Indian name. So, we do not suggest you consider changing your name to indicate your new location. We hope this letter has been useful to you. If you have any questions or would like further information, please don't hesitate to write to us again. Ursula Georges, Talan Gwynek, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael assisted in researching and writing this report. For the Academy, Juliana de Luna 26 August 2008 [1] Juliana de Luna, "Spanish Names from the Late 15th Century" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999-2000). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/isabella/ [2] Roth, Cecil. _Don~a Gracia of the House of Nasi._ Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1948. Gracia converted, changed her name to , then returned to the name once she arrived in Constantinople. [3] Yehoshua ben Haim haYerushalmi, "A sample of Jewish names in Valencia 1293-1485" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2003). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/yehoshua/names_in_valencia.html [4] Juliana de Luna, "Medieval Spanish Jewish Names of the 13th and 14th Centuries" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1998). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/iberian-jewish/ [5] Juliana de Luna, "Jews in Catalonia: 1250 to 1400" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2002). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/catalan-jews/. Note that these names are taken from wills, and hence follow different formats than names from other documents, as well as being considerably before the period of concern here. [6] Roth, Norman, _Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain_, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. [7] Uckelman, Sara L., "Late-Period Spanish Men's Names from Seville" (WWW: Self-published, 2006). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/spanish/silversmiths.html [8] Netanyahu, B., _Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1998, Appendix A, discusses the variety of period forms of the name. There are few Spanish citations as the most prominent Spanish members of the family were conversos using different names. [9] Goitein, Solomon D, _A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (six volumes) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Here European Jews retained names distinctly different from native-born Jews.