Dear JewishGenners,
I have found the graves of two people whom I suspect were brothers: my known
great-grandfather Jacob MILLER and a certain Morris MILLER whom I believe to
have been my great-great-uncle.
There is substantial circumstantial evidence that they were brothers - according to
their marriage licenses they both had parents named Meyer MILLER and Sarah
SCHNEIDER MILLER. They were close in age, and both came >from Khotin, Bessarabia. I
know that my great-grandfather had a brother named Morris. They are also both
missing >from the 1900 US Federal Census - raising the possibility that they might
have been living together.
I was hoping that their graves would provide the proverbial "smoking gun", based on
their patronyms. What I found was that one of the graves bared the patronym "Meyer
Aryeh", and the other had "Meyer Leib". Leib is the Yiddish version of the Hebrew
"Aryeh" (lion).
My question: would a person likely be alternately known by the Yiddish and Hebrew
version of his name? I would be interested in the consensus of my fellow
JewishGenners, both on the issue of the Hebrew/Yiddish alternative and also based
on the circumstantial evidence.
TIA,
Meron LAVIE