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ArchivesRe: Austrian Names
in reply to a message by Sara Ruth
Thanks for your comments about the name Perl and Pauline too. It's been very confusing to me to try and figure out why our family records show her as Paula, her immigration and marriage records show Perl and 3 later census records show Pauline! It's interesting to me that we don't see my g-g-grandmother taking a Hebrew name though. She seems to have gone from Yiddish to and English name. Do you think its possible she might have had a Jewish name too, but that its just not recorded?
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Sorry, just getting back to this now.
Back in the generation that my great-grandparents (and I assume yours) immigrated from Eastern Europe, Yiddish was the language used by Jews. Hebrew didn't become a popularly spoken language until the creation of Israel in the 1940's. It was a dead language like Latin before Israel revitalized it. Even today, my grandparents speak a little bit of Yiddish, and use lots of Yiddish words and phrases in their English, but they don't speak Hebrew - it's just not a colloquial language to them in the same way.
So, yes, it makes sense to me that an Austrian Jewish woman from the 1900's would have a Yiddish given name (Perl) that was changed to an English name (Paula or Pauline) when she came to Ellis Island. She may have had a Hebrew name for religious reasons, but that would not be a name that she was ever called by or used in real life. Also keep in mind that back then, girls didn't have bat mitzvahs. So she would not have needed a Hebrew name for her bat mitzvah like a boy would.
Hope this helps :)
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Sorry, just getting back to this now.
Back in the generation that my great-grandparents (and I assume yours) immigrated from Eastern Europe, Yiddish was the language used by Jews. Hebrew didn't become a popularly spoken language until the creation of Israel in the 1940's. It was a dead language like Latin before Israel revitalized it. Even today, my grandparents speak a little bit of Yiddish, and use lots of Yiddish words and phrases in their English, but they don't speak Hebrew - it's just not a colloquial language to them in the same way.
So, yes, it makes sense to me that an Austrian Jewish woman from the 1900's would have a Yiddish given name (Perl) that was changed to an English name (Paula or Pauline) when she came to Ellis Island. She may have had a Hebrew name for religious reasons, but that would not be a name that she was ever called by or used in real life. Also keep in mind that back then, girls didn't have bat mitzvahs. So she would not have needed a Hebrew name for her bat mitzvah like a boy would.
Hope this helps :)
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