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The Hebrew equivalent of Vilmos #hungary

tom klein <h-sig@...>
 

My only disagreement with this is that "hamechune x" is a bald statement of fact. in the case of a get, the man is available, and can (presumably) provide his jewish name. in that case, if it really is Binyomin/Zeev/Wolf, it is quite understandable to add "hamechune Vilmos" ("called Vilmos") to the end, as a clarification, for the narrow purpose of writing a proper get. in the post-emancipation world, hungarian jews (unlike those in poland/russia) were often known more by their secular names than their jewish names, so the clarification was quite necessary.

But not every Binyomin/Zeev/Wolf was named Vilmos (as an alternative, Farkas Springs to mind immediately, but then again Tivadar is also a well known example).

Any such statistical (anecdotal) links are at best suggestive, so you cannot jump to the conclusion that a given Vilmos had a hebrew name of Binyomin without any documentation.

The linking of Jewish and secular names was almost automatic elsewhere, but i find many more exceptions among hungarian jews. This may be partly due to the popularity of "hungarian" names (like Arpad, Bela, Geza, Zoltan, etc.) for nationalistic reasons, or just "not-too-jewish" names (Adolf, Janos, Pista, Miksa, etc.) for assimilationist reasons. in either case, where there isn't a convenient jewish equivalent, the names can't really "match". (e.g. Geza to Moishe Yaaqov or Erzsebet to Feigele.)

and there may also have been a demographic reason for *not* matching names, namely that family sizes decreased dramatically, limiting the number of children available to commemorate departed ancestors. (I see a little of this in my own names, which came >from 2 different persons, and in my children's names.)


....... tom klein, toronto

"Prof. G. L. Esterson" <jerry@vms.huji.ac.il> wrote:

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
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
GilaMiriam Chait <gilamiriamchait@...>
 

Vilmos is the Hungarian equivalent of William. I too
have two great uncles whose names were recorded as
Wolf at birth and were later known as Vilmos, or Vili.

Gila Miriam Chait,
Manchester, England

--- Judy and Gary Floam <gfloam@netrax.net> wrote:

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 Floam
Baltimore, Md.
<snip>
tom klein <h-sig@...>
 

vilmos is the hungarian version of william (in this case the idea of "equivalent" names is quite correct), and likewise of wilhelm, guillaume, and liam. the only reason for linking wilhelm to binyamin/zeev/wolf (see jewishgen archives for why these three names are linked) was originally the similarity of sound , in german, and later on probably just because it was "inherited" that way, because there is no other logical connection to associate them.

in fact, probably the most famous binyamin zeev is a great example of how hungarian jews named their children: theodor herzl. (maybe his parents didn't like yedidiah or velvel?)

i also think that the idea that jewish parents consulted a book of gittin when naming a baby is silly. the names had to have come first, and the books later sought to codify the naming patterns that were already in use. with the popularity of completely non-jewish names (like janos and pisti or geza) following the emancipation, the books of gittin gained importance. (rabbis didn't need a book to remind them that yankel was a diminutive of jacob.)

the point is not whether one individual vilmos had a jewish name of zeev or binyamin, but rather that, given a secular name like vilmos (or arpad or zoltan, or theodor), it is impossible to make any conclusions about their jewish name (without further evidence).


....... klein tamas, toronto

From: "Judy and Gary Floam" <gfloam@netrax.net> wrote:

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 Floam
Baltimore, Md.
Katz, Itzik <Itzik.Katz@...>
 

Vilmos has no meaning in Hungarian. The Hungarian word and equivalent
name for Zeev (wolf) is Farkas (Hungarian spelling were s =3D sh). My
great grandfather's Hebrew name was Chaim Zeev and incidentally his
Hungarian name was Farkas. As mentioned many time in the H-SIG there
isn't always a connection between a person's Hebrew name to his
Hungarian one.

Isaac Katz
Israel

-----Original Message-----
From: Judy and Gary Floam [mailto:gfloam@netrax.net]=20
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 6:57 PM
To: H-SIG
Subject: Re: Re:[h-sig] The Hebrew equivalent of Vilmos

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 Floam
Baltimore, Md.




----- Original Message -----
From: Prof. G. L. Esterson <jerry@vms.huji.ac.il>
To: H-SIG <h-sig@lyris.jewishgen.org>
Cc: Amos Israel Zezmer <amos.zezmer@wanadoo.fr>
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 4:14 PM
Subject: Re:[h-sig] The Hebrew equivalent of Vilmos

<snip>
Judy and Gary Floam <gfloam@...>
 

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 Floam
Baltimore, Md.

----- Original Message -----
From: Prof. G. L. Esterson <jerry@vms.huji.ac.il>
To: H-SIG <h-sig@lyris.jewishgen.org>
Cc: Amos Israel Zezmer <amos.zezmer@wanadoo.fr>
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 4:14 PM
Subject: Re:[h-sig] The Hebrew equivalent of Vilmos


Amos Zezmer posted as follows:

"Would anyone know the Hebrew equivalent(s) of the given name Vilmos? Is
there anywhere on the web where one can look up secular given names and
their Hebrew equivalents?"

to which the Monitor replied as follows:

"Moderator: As countless subscribers have previously indicated, there are
no fixed Hungarian counterparts to Yiddish or Hebrew counterparts for
Hungarian names and, conversely and no fixed Yiddish or Hebrew versions of
secular Hungarian names. Those who wanted to Magyarize their shtetl names
might pick a name that sounded similar or began with the same letter but
might as easily pick a name that bore no resemblance whatsoever. Check the
Hungarian SIG archives for the many discussions that we've had on this
topic and for on-line references. Please respond off-list if you have
specific suggestions."

What the Moderator has written is correct, as far as it goes. However,
there is in fact a *linkage* made by the rabbis in Hungary between the
Hungarian secular name Vilmos and the two Hebrew names: Binyamin and
Ze'eyv. And this is pertinent to the questions of Mr. Zezmer.

The secular name Vilmos was widely used by Jews in Hungary, to the extent
that the rabbis who wrote Jewish legal tracts on the subject of the
linkage
between Hungarian (and German) secular names and these two Hebrew names,
set Jewish law as follows: If a Jew could be shown by the Divorce Rabbi
to
have used both the name Vilmos and the name Binyamin, then in a Jewish
contract (e.g., a Get, a Jewish divorce contract), he must be identified
(i.e., his name written) as Binyamin haMechune Vilmosh (written in Hebrew
characters, the *Yiddish* version of Vilmos being pronounced exactly like
the secular name). "haMechune" is a Hebrew legal term meaning "known as"
or "alias".

And the same was true of the two names Vilmos and Ze'eyv: Ze'eyv
haMechune
Vilmosh.

So, I it is possible to answer the question posed by Amos Zezmer
positively, in the limited sense I have described. The names were not
*equivalent* but they were rather linked to their Hebrew names
statistically through their frequency of use and Jewish Law. That is, a
researcher might reasonably expect to find sometimes one, sometimes the
other, and sometimes both of the linked secular and Hebrew names in
Hungarian documents. Mr. Zezmer should be on the lookout for the given
names Binyamin and Ze'eyv (or something close to these two names, such as
Binye (a Yiddish nickname for Binyamin) or Yomi (another such Yiddish
nickname).

It is also true, as the Moderator has stated, that a Jew with the name
Vilmos could also have been given at birth almost any of the other Hebrew
names which were used by Jews -- without any special linkage to them, just
low-level statistics. The names Binyamin and Ze'eyv were special in the
strong statistical connection of Vilmos to them.

In answer to the second question, the name Vilmos (and other) secular
names) can be found on the JewishGen Given Names Data Bases web site:

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

by searching the Hungary GNDB for the name "Vilmos" using Global Plain
Text
Search (without the quotation marks). An update to this GNDB is now in
preparation and will contain a full set of the 500 German secular names
used by Hungarian Jews as well as about 50 Hungarian secular names also
used by them.

Shavu'a tov,

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

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Prof. G. L. Esterson <jerry@...>
 

Amos Zezmer posted as follows:

"Would anyone know the Hebrew equivalent(s) of the given name Vilmos? Is
there anywhere on the web where one can look up secular given names and
their Hebrew equivalents?"

to which the Monitor replied as follows:

"Moderator: As countless subscribers have previously indicated, there are
no fixed Hungarian counterparts to Yiddish or Hebrew counterparts for
Hungarian names and, conversely and no fixed Yiddish or Hebrew versions of
secular Hungarian names. Those who wanted to Magyarize their shtetl names
might pick a name that sounded similar or began with the same letter but
might as easily pick a name that bore no resemblance whatsoever. Check the
Hungarian SIG archives for the many discussions that we've had on this
topic and for on-line references. Please respond off-list if you have
specific suggestions."

What the Moderator has written is correct, as far as it goes. However,
there is in fact a *linkage* made by the rabbis in Hungary between the
Hungarian secular name Vilmos and the two Hebrew names: Binyamin and
Ze'eyv. And this is pertinent to the questions of Mr. Zezmer.

The secular name Vilmos was widely used by Jews in Hungary, to the extent
that the rabbis who wrote Jewish legal tracts on the subject of the linkage
between Hungarian (and German) secular names and these two Hebrew names,
set Jewish law as follows: If a Jew could be shown by the Divorce Rabbi to
have used both the name Vilmos and the name Binyamin, then in a Jewish
contract (e.g., a Get, a Jewish divorce contract), he must be identified
(i.e., his name written) as Binyamin haMechune Vilmosh (written in Hebrew
characters, the *Yiddish* version of Vilmos being pronounced exactly like
the secular name). "haMechune" is a Hebrew legal term meaning "known as"
or "alias".

And the same was true of the two names Vilmos and Ze'eyv: Ze'eyv haMechune
Vilmosh.

So, I it is possible to answer the question posed by Amos Zezmer
positively, in the limited sense I have described. The names were not
*equivalent* but they were rather linked to their Hebrew names
statistically through their frequency of use and Jewish Law. That is, a
researcher might reasonably expect to find sometimes one, sometimes the
other, and sometimes both of the linked secular and Hebrew names in
Hungarian documents. Mr. Zezmer should be on the lookout for the given
names Binyamin and Ze'eyv (or something close to these two names, such as
Binye (a Yiddish nickname for Binyamin) or Yomi (another such Yiddish
nickname).

It is also true, as the Moderator has stated, that a Jew with the name
Vilmos could also have been given at birth almost any of the other Hebrew
names which were used by Jews -- without any special linkage to them, just
low-level statistics. The names Binyamin and Ze'eyv were special in the
strong statistical connection of Vilmos to them.

In answer to the second question, the name Vilmos (and other) secular
names) can be found on the JewishGen Given Names Data Bases web site:

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

by searching the Hungary GNDB for the name "Vilmos" using Global Plain Text
Search (without the quotation marks). An update to this GNDB is now in
preparation and will contain a full set of the 500 German secular names
used by Hungarian Jews as well as about 50 Hungarian secular names also
used by them.

Shavu'a tov,

Professor G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel
Amos Israel Zezmer <amos.zezmer@...>
 

Would anyone know the Hebrew equivalent(s) of the given name Vilmos? Is
there anywhere on the web where one can look up secular given names and
their Hebrew equivalents?

Thank you.

Amos Zezmer
Yerres, France
Researching SPIEGEL, ROTH, MOSKOVIC, SCHLANGER, BLEIER, ACKERMAN in
Zemplen, Vel'ké Kapusany, Humenné, Klyucharki, Mukacheve

Moderator: As countless subscribers have previously indicated, there are no fixed Hungarian counterparts to Yiddish or Hebrew counterparts for Hungarian names and, conversely and no fixed Yiddish or Hebrew versions of secular Hungarian names. Those who wanted to Magyarize their shtetl names might pick a name that sounded similar or began with the same letter but might as easily pick a name that bore no resemblance whatsoever. Check the Hungarian SIG archives for the many discussions that we've had on this topic and for on-line references. Please respond off-list if you have specific suggestions.
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