Hi All, I am newish at the Jewish research and I am having trouble following surname changes and why they keep changing. I have read all sorts of information and the obvious changes I understand, moving towns, changing jobs etc. I started with my 4th great grandfather Louis/Loeb Dusseldorf in Altona and following headstone information back  his father and Grandfather were Dusseldorf, Louis' great grandfather was a SeGaL from Hannover, his 2x great grandfather was a SeGaL (I think also from Hannover) yet his 3x great grandfather was a Leuwarden (I think). Why did we change from Leuwarden to SeGaL to Dusseldorf (or a variation of)? Thanks in Advance
Tanya Williams 
Cowra, NSW, Australia

I can explain the change from Leuwarden to Segal.
The name Segal סג"ל is the Hebrew abbreviation for סגן לכהן SEGAn Lecohen = The one to see to the need of the Cohen, the priest, as that was (and to some degree still is) the job of the Levites to assist the Cohanim, the priests.
As such 99.9% of Segals are indeed Levites.
The sound of the name Leuwarden also indicates the being of a Levite.
In fact, on The Rotterdam Jewish cemetery, there are interred a David (1718-1808) & Moses (died 1769) Levy, sons of Rabbi Leib Leeuwarden Segal" and in the Jewish cemetery of the town Leeuwarden (!!!) there is interred a Isaac (1697-1750) son of Juda Levie Leeuwarden Segal.

As to Dusseldorf, did they perhaps move (or lived) there?
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Nachum Aronson

Some of these responses do not make sense. The name Leeuwarden has no connection with "Levi" or "HaLevi" but instead represents a town in the Netherlands in which ostensibly people from this family lived for a while and which name they adopted on and off for their fixed family name. Ditto with "Dusseldorf". SeGal, as is correctly noted is only a designation of a caste name, i.e., the 3% of Jews who are Levites and use "HaLevi" as the last part of their Hebrew names. Hence, both names might even be used  together,  e.g., Leuwaarden Segal .  And no, the language of northern Netherlands and northwest German coast, i.e., Frisian, is the certainly closest language to old Anglo-Saxon English but is not "very similar to English", having diverged from English by 1500 years of separate development.

Bob Weinberg

My suggestion is they incorporated the name of the city where they were living. Everyone knows Dusseldorf. Leeuwarden is a city and the capital of Friesland. The language largely spoken in the north of Netherlands is called West Frisian, and as Robert Weinberg points out is an Saxon language. If you can speak old English you can speak West Frisian. Yes, it is a language, not a dialect. All business conducted in the Friesian (Fryslan) parliament is done in Frisian.

BTW my name ending in 'stra is a Friesian name.

Just a bit of background.
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Although it is true that the name Leeuwarden refers to the capital of Friesland in The Netherlands (as hinted at in my initial post when I referred to a member of the family being buried there), but it is not at all far-fetched to suggest that they adopted that as a surname, not only because they lived there but also because it also hints to them being Levites.
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Nachum Aronson

English text Wikipedia about Leeuwarden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeuwarden Listen to the Dutch pronunciation of Leeuwarden. (Frisian: Ljouwert). Also in that article, the origin of the name. History of the city including a part about the Jewish community.

There were/are, besides the Frisian language in different dialects and local languages different variants of the name, so pronunciation may vary. Leeuwarden en Leuwarden is just a matter of spelling.
It's beyond me how Leeuwarden as a surname hints them to being Levites.

To Tanya Williams: maybe it's not a matter of changing surnames, but using, or being registered with different surnames in different context. I researched a Cohen family; while some of them appeared in Amsterdam burial records as amesfort or the like, others didn't (though they all lived or had lived in Amersfoort and used the name Cohen). A family de Jongh (de Jong, de Jonge) that used that surname since late 1600's but remained Rintel in Jewish records). And of course, in Europe early 19th century everybody had to have an official surname, and within families different surnames could appear.

To Pieter Hoekstra: Westfriesland is the name of a region in the northern part of what is now the province of Noordholland. Originating from the time they were connected with nowadays Friesland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland#/media/File:Frisia_716-la.svg
Later and now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Friesland_(region)
I can understand though why the name west-Friesland for the Dutch part of Friesland is also used as opposed to Ost-Friesland in Germany.

Loes Buisman, Amsterdam