Re: The Hebrew equivalent of Vilmos #hungary
Prof. G. L. Esterson <jerry@...>
Judy Floam (>from Baltimore - my birth town!) posted as follows:
"Just a further thought on this question: does the name "vilmos" have a meaning in Hungarian? And does it have anything to do with wolves? "Ze'ev" means wolf in Hebrew and the Yiddish-German-English counterparts to that Hebrew name were often Wolf or William (including my father and one of my mother's brothers)." Judy has brought up a very interesting question, to which I can respond as follows. In fact, not only did the rabbis specify that the Hungarian secular name Vilmos was a legal kinui for the two Hebrew names Binyamim and Ze'eyv, but also they specified that these two Hebrew names also had another *Yiddish* kinui, Volf. That is, for men having the two names Binyamin and Volf, their Legal Jewish Name would need to be written as: Binyamin haMechune Volf. And for Ze'eyv, Ze'eyv haMechune Volf. So, here we see there is an interesting linkage between the two Hebrew names and the Yiddish name Volf. Another interesting fact: if you visit the JewishGen web site: < http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/GivenNames > and search for the Hungarian name Vilmos, you will find one listing for this name by itself, besides the two listings for the name together with Binyamin and Ze'eyv. And this record for Vilmos alone shows that this Hungarian secular name is considered to be *equivalent* to the German secular name Wilhelm and its nickname Willi. Also shown there are Latin/Latinized names (Villemus and Wilhelmus) which were also *equivalent* to the Hungarian and German secular names. The German secular name Wilhelm was a very popular name with Jews throughout Europe, including Hungary, and some Hungarian Jews substituted the Hungarian version (Vilmos) of Wilhelm, while others alternatively used both under different circumstances. Interestingly, the German secular name William was also widely used throughout Europe, including Hungary, and the name William was a secular kinui in German-speaking lands (including Hungary) for many Hebrew names; however, it did not enjoy a *special* statistical linkage to any specific Hebrew given names in either Germany or Hungary. So, Jewish genealogists should draw conclusions >from these statistical results in doing their research of archival documents. Professor G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel jerry@vms.huji.ac.il
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