Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names : Their Origins, Structure, Pronunciations, and Migrations

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3 star:		(1)
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This book is indispensible for anyone who is interested in the names of their parents, grandparents and other ancestors. Beider provides Hebrew spellings, Yiddish pronunciations and historical background for each name as well as English equivalents. I could not have figured out why my grandfather's Hebrew name was Borekh, but his English U.S. name was Benjamin, without this book. A must have for serious genealogists.

Alexander Beider is in my opinion a genius. This volume must represent an enormous amount of research on his part considering the depth into which he goes on each of the names. Furthermore, almost half the book covers previous work on the subject, analysis, tradition, name changes, sources and communities information. The rest of the book, in my opinion,is the definitive collection of Ashkenazic names, their sources and their variations.

I was looking for a regular dictionary of names a la Kolatch's dictionaries of Hebrew names. This book gives great background but is not as easy to use and does not include many names.