Yes,
the Bondi family came >from the Spanish buffer zone in France (Provence,
Languedoc, Rousillon) and Spain (Aragon, Catalonia) which belonged to a
group of Jewish communities which had had a common representative (seen as a
king or prince, bearing in Hebrew the titles Mar or Nasi) and were under the
same Spanish King or earlier under the same emperor Charlemagne. They
settled in actual Germany, the same as the famous Kalonymos saga where
you'll find many references to. Bondi is a variation of Bondia the
vernacular version of the Hebrew Yomtob. Yomtob are related to the Shemtob,
and therefore to the Kalonymos and the Bonet and the derivation Bernet.

Maybe this relation is very far away, but we are only trying to establish
the connections between them all. Ashkenazi means ">from Germany" and
Sephardi means >from "Sefarad" that's the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and
Portugal). So if they had just arrived in the Rhine Valley, they probably
would have been referred to as the "Sephardim". Later on if they moved again
out of there to another place e.g. Sarepta (France) they would have been
called "Ashkenazi".

You are invited to read my article about it at:

http://www.geocities.com/vinos_somoza/magazine.html

Andres J. Bonet Spain <andresbonet@hotmail.com>