David Laufer posted as follows:

Can anyone tell me about the given name Leni ? Is it a name in its own
right, or the diminutive form of another name such as Helene ?

The name Leni is a stand-alone given name much used by non-Jewish Germans,
and adopted beginning about 1800 by German Jews. It was also used by them
as a diminutive for the German secular name Helene.

Sometime after this secular name Leni began to be used actively by Jews in
Germany, it was also adopted by Jews living in other European countries,
including Czechoslovakia.

Its use by Jews in Germany is shown in the JewishGen Given Names Data Base
for Germany at the web site:

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

by searching for the name Leni using Plain Text Search. Its use in
Czechoslovakia and other countries will be seen in the GNDBs for those
countries on the JewishGen web site, after an upcoming update.

Professor G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel
jerry@...