At 2:58 PM +0200 8/20/06, David Zohar wrote:

Sa Nes exists in Israel as a Hebrew surname meaning Carry(Sa) the Flag(Nes).

To me, "Sa Nes" looks like a classic example of a Hebrew surnames
that emerged in modern Israel, resulting >from the Hebraizing (simply
on the basis of "sound-alike") of a Yiddish name with an entirely
unrelated meaning. Sa nes is the singular form of se'u nes, found
at Jeremiah 4:6 in the expression Se'u nes Tsiyyonah (literally,
"carry the banner to Zion"), Wherever the original SANES surname
came from, it is unlikely to have been >from that biblical verse.

Switching to a sound-alike but not linguistically related Hebrew
surname was standard practice among early Zionist leaders --
including David Gruen (Green) who became ben Gurion (the name of a
talmudic character see b.Taanith, 19b), Shimon Persky who became
Peres (meaning a vulture) and Ariel Scheinermann who became Sharon
(an important coastal region in Israel ).

I am wondering whether the spelling "Sanes" could (in the context
of Jewish genealogy) be a transliteration >from Yiddish of the
surname Szenes (pronounced Senesh). The most famous person of this
name was Hannah Szenes, a Haganah heroine who was captured and
executed by the Nazis after parachuting into Yugoslavia during the
war to try to help the Hungarian Jewish resistance. She was also a
poet, who composed Ashrei ha-Gafrur ("Blessed is the Match") a poem
often featured in Holocaust memorial services today.

Judith Romney Wegner