Ellen Cleary posted as follows:
"It looks like a female ancestor of mine may have been named Finkel.
I would like to know more about the origin, meaning, and variations of this name.

I have tried searching on JewishGen for this information, but have not
found anything, which may be my shortcoming. I would appreciate any
ideas you might have about this name and/or suggestions of other resources."

====>Finkl is a Yiddish given name that was used sparsely in a number of central
and eastern European countries by women. The name means "Little Spark".

In addition to having been but sparsely used, it also did not generate many
nicknames or other variants of the basic Yiddish name. Some nicknames that
were used by women with the name Finkl were: Finkla, Finkle, Finklye, and
Finke, depending on the country of interest.

I did not find the name in the Germany archival documents which I have
used, but it does appear in other countries data bases farther east. The
name may be seen on the Poland (and some other countries) Given Names Data
Base on the JewishGen web site at the address:

< http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/GivenNames/ >

by searching for the name Finkl, the Legal name used in documents. Shavua tov,

Professor G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel <jerry@vms.huji.ac.il>