On 2005.08.01, Yisrael Asper <yisraelasper@...> writes:

The PADAWER Kohen branch of my friend appears suspiciously similar
to Dan Rottenberg's "Finding Our Fathers" book's description of the
name PADAWER:
"French family whose name is derived >from Padua, Italy,
its original home. The family later migrated to Poland
before moving to France."

I believe that I am descended >from the RAPAPORT family of Porto.
This is documented by my cousin in Australia.

He writes about the origin of the RAPAPORT family name:

"Second part - Port. The origin of Port is fairly certainly
the city of Porto in northern Italy, where Moshe Hacohen
Rapa's son, Jekutiel Hacohen Rapa, known as Yechiel, lived."

I have then found (see http://tinyurl.com/doker)

"The earliest known Rapaport is Rabbi Yaakov HaKohen of Porto,
who is known by the Rapaport name >from 1462. It is likely that
his immediate predecessors fled Ashkenaz, Germany around this
time which was the year of the expulsion of Jews >from Mainz.
The region of Southern Germany left was known as Rapa. They
came to Porto, a river city in the Padua region of Northern
Italy. Thus the name Rapaport tells of the families'
geographical origins."

So the story is very much the same, it would seem.

Nick Landau
London, UK

COHNREICH (Anklam, Germany Krajenka, Poland) ATLAS (Wielkie Oczy
(near Lvov/Lemberg), Poland)
WECHSLER(Schwabach, Germany) KOHN (Wallerstein and Kleinerdlingen,
Germany)
LANDAU/FREDKIN(Gomel, Mogilev, Belarus)