Jewish Genealogy in Greece: Reconstructing the Mijan Family

by Michael Waas

Kehila Kedosha Janina, the Romaniote Synagogue of New York City. Photo taken by author in May 2022.

Jews have been living in what is now Greece for over 2,200 years, since the time of the Second Temple.  The Romaniote (Ρωμανιώτες, רומניוטים) community claims this ancient Diasporic community as their ancestors. The name “Romaniote” originates with the period of the Roman Empire when Jewish diasporic settlement expanded in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region, particularly during the time of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) in what is now Greece, Turkey, the southern Balkans, and parts of Southern Italy.

Of course, the story of Jews in Greece doesn’t end with Romaniote Jews. During the later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, small communities of Ashkenazi Jews also settled in the region, joining the rich tapestry of Jewish communities in the Empire. By the last century of the Eastern Roman Empire, significant changes in the political and socioeconomic landscape were occurring with the emergence of the Ottoman Empire. By 1451, the Ottomans had taken control of almost all of the Romaniote and Ashkenazi communities that had settled in the Aegean region.

A depiction of the Ottoman Empire and its dependencies in 1451 (map: Chamboz, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons, cropped in order to magnify the region.)

The 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople under Sultan Mehmet al-Fatih (the Conqueror, who ruled from 1444-1446 and again from 1451-1481) left a profound impact on Jewish history and genealogy in the region. As I explain in my presentation In the Lands of Osman: Jewish Genealogy in the Former Ottoman Empire, this marked a pivotal moment. The Sultan ordered much of the Jewish community in his realm to relocate to Constantinople, making Istanbul the largest community of Romaniote Jews in the Empire.

In the generations that followed, while the Romaniote population remained centered in Constantinople, many individuals and families returned to Greece, re-establishing communities in places such as Arta, Chalkida, Ioannina, Larissa, Trikkala, and Volos, and rejoining existing communities like Chania and Corfu.

The most dramatic demographic shift was still on the horizon: the arrival of the Sepharadim, the Jews of Iberia. While it is widely believed that Sultan Bayezit II (1481-1512), who succeeded his father Mehmet al-Fatih, supposedly stated upon the issuance of the Alhambra Decree:

“You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler,” he said to his courtiers, “he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”

in actuality, there is no evidence of this and the story likely originated in the mythmaking of the 400th anniversary of the Decree. In 1892, the Jews of the Empire marked the anniversary by honoring the ancestors of Sultan Abdulhamit II (who reigned from 1876 to 1909) for their role in providing sanctuary to the refugees during their time of desperation.

The truth, as reality often is, is far more complex. It was shaped by a period of cultural development during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Many diverse Jewish communities either migrated or were absorbed into the growing Ottoman Empire. These groups included Italian Jews (Italkim), Sepharadim (1492 refugees), Portuguese/New Christians, Jews from Sicily and Calabria, Jews from the Eastern or Arab world (Mustarabim), as well as the aforementioned Romaniote and Ashkenazi communities. Later, Jews of the Caucasus (Kavkazim), Yemenite Jews (Temanim), and Persian Jews (Parsim) would also be absorbed or emigrate to the Empire. During this time, these disparate communities would come to form a Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, speaking community in the Ottoman heartland (Balkans, Anatolia, Syria, and the Holy Land) with a shared origin story of 1492.

Jewish Genealogy in Greece

Pursuing Jewish Genealogy in Greece is rewarding but difficult. Unlike in Christian Europe where a modern civil registration dates to the early 19th century in most cases, civil registration in the Ottoman Empire really only dates to the Hamidian period (1876-1909), with standardization achieved more or less in the early 20th century. In modern Greece, outside of some exceptions, civil registration generally dates from 1925 onward (as per Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry). Prior to civil registration, the responsibility of maintaining any records fell on the Jewish community. Unfortunately, many of these archives were lost, destroyed, or fragmented during the Nazi Occupation or, in the case of Salonika, heavily damaged in the Great Fire of 1917.

Jewish genealogy in Greece can appear positively daunting. However, a lot more exists and is just waiting to be uncovered in your journey. Many communities have manuscripts or archives that have survived in places like the Jewish Museum in Athens, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Yad Ben Zvi, or countless libraries and private archives globally. Additionally there are the Ottoman Archives in Turkey and the State Archives System of Greece, both of which hold extensive documentation of Jewish history in Greece, spanning from the 15th century to the present day. There are also secondary archives like the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, diplomatic archives all across Europe, and, of course, records and documents produced by individuals from the communities globally that record names and information seemingly lost over time. Finally, DNA testing for genealogy (Y-DNA, Mitochondrial DNA, and Autosomal DNA) which can reconnect families and strengthen construction of family trees where the documentation no longer exists or is heavily fragmented.

In the next section, I'll dive into a fascinating case study utilizing my own family history to demonstrate the incredible potential of working with diverse archives, languages, and data sources in Greece.

The Mijan Family of Larissa

In order to grasp the full scope of this research journey, we must begin at the beginning. As a teenager, my great-uncle Morris told me that his mother, my great-grandmother Rebecca Angel, was born in Larissa, Greece. She was the only daughter of her mother, Mazaltov Mijan, and third child of her father, Moise Angel (whose family I will discuss in a future article about Jewish Genealogy in Greece). Rebecca, as I would come to discover, was named for her father’s first wife, Rebecca Sami, who had passed away. Mazaltov and Rebecca arrived in America on August 21, 1910 aboard the Martha Washington. Their arrival contact was their brother-in-law and uncle, respectively, Moise Kabeli.

Source: The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 - 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957, last accessed on Ancestry.com October 8, 2023.

Visiting her grave in November 2022.

My great-uncle also told me that his grandmother’s family originally came from Sicily, before settling in Greece (more on that later). He shared some hazy memories of his grandmother, who had passed away in 1926 when he was only three and a half years old. He also told stories about his parents, my great-grandparents, and how they, along with his brothers, Jacob and Alfred, my grandfather, would go picnic at her grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens and eat cucumbers.

Her grave, in the typical Sephardic style of a horizontal grave reads as follows:

Translation
Here lies
The honored woman
My mother, Mrs.
Mazaltov Angel
She died 2 Adar 5686
May her soul be bound in the bonds of life

Transcription
פ״נ
האשה הכבודה
מרת אמי
מזל טוב אנג׳יל
נפ׳ ב׳ אדר תרפו
ת נ צ ב ה

Source: Death Certificate of Mazeltov Angel, no. 6815, borough of Manhattan, New York City Municipal Archives.

The English text on the bottom reads “Mazaltov Angel, My Beloved Mother, Died March 6, 1926, aged 62 years”. While her grave does not reveal her parents’ names, her Manhattan death certificate does.

According to the death certificate, her father was Eliezer Mijan, and her mother was Bachora Cohen, both born in Greece. The informant was my great-grandmother, her daughter.

Additionally, my great-uncle introduced me to some cousins from this side of the family, and through them, I learned that her brother was a certain Samuel Mijan married to Mazaltov Zini Gatenio, and that they were survivors of the Shoah.

One piece of evidence that further confirmed Eliezer as their father’s name came from a list of contributors from Larissa to the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in 1894. In this list, he is identified as “Mijian [sic], Sam-Eliez.”

Source: ⁨⁨Bulletin de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle⁩, January 1, 1894, p. 158. Accessed through Historical Jewish Press database, National Library of Israel, last accessed October 8, 1894.

For many years, the only further information I could find about this family confirmed my great-uncle’s oral history. It turned out that her family did indeed migrate from Sicily to Greece. Rabbi Michael Molho of Salonika, a scholar and historian of the community, played a significant role in this revelation. He and Rabbi Isaac Emmanuel compiled a register of families associated with various synagogues in Salonika, organized mostly by their place of origin before settling in Salonika, where they maintained their own minhagim.

The Mijan family (also Mizan/Μιζάν and משען, מיזאן, מיז׳אן) belonged to the Sicilia Yashan (Old Sicily) synagogue in Salonika. Later in my research, I discovered that the family also had a presence in typically Romaniote communities like Ioannina and Arta, as well as in mixed Italian/Romaniote communities such as Corfu, Greece. This was due to the closely related approaches to halakha between Sicilian Jews and the Romaniote communities. Intriguingly, the name also appears among Syrian Jews, spelled as Mishan in English, and the Italian Jews, who write it in Italian as Misan or Misano.

Death Certificate of Abraham Eliezer Mijan, born in Larissa. Thanks to Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry for his assistance.

Earlier this year, I made a significant breakthrough through autosomal testing on FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage: I discovered an older brother of Mazaltov and Samuel named Abraham/Avraham. Subsequent research spanning diplomatic archives in Spain, naturalization records in France, and Avraham's death certificate in Greece confirmed his identity. Avraham Mijan was born in 1848 in Larissa, and it appears he may have been married twice. He was a merchant and died 1917 in Salonika.

Further investigation in the manuscripts of Yad Ben Zvi revealed an additional unnamed daughter of Eliezer Mijan and Bechora Cohen. During Pesach 5639 (April 7-15, 1879), the teacher Haim Shemuel Cohen of Larissa recorded the engagement of an unnamed son of Nissim Iosif to the unnamed daughter of Eliezer Mijan, writing (Hidushim velekutim, 23a, YBZ Ms. 3510):

Pessah [5]639

El ijo de Nisim Iosif kon la ija de Lazeratchi Mijan

פסח 639

איל איז׳ו די ניסים יוסף קון לה איז׳ה די ליזיראג׳י משען

With a combination of DNA analysis and extensive research in a diverse set of global archives, I achieved a groundbreaking revelation: Eliezer, nicknamed “Eliezeratchi”, Mijan and his wife Bechora Cohen had at least four children who survived to adulthood, three of whom who had families, with the fourth almost certainly following suit. Time will reveal whether we can uncover more about this unnamed daughter and her unnamed husband.

The late Ezra Moissis and Rafael Frezis chronicled the histories of the Jewish communities of Larissa and Volos respectively. These books contain invaluable pictures and historical accounts not readily available elsewhere. By the late 19th century, Volos had essentially become a daughter community of Larissa after it was reconstituted in the second half of the 19th century, and the families of both cities were and are deeply interconnected. The Mijan family's presence in both cities during the 19th and 20th centuries is documented in these books. The challenge, however, was in connecting the pieces of the puzzle.

It was during an examination of another close DNA match that the final fragments of the puzzle fell into place.

Autosomal analysis based on the DNA matches to the grandson of Mazaltov Mijan and Moise Angel. The total shared and the length of the longest segments are consistent with 2nd cousins, once removed for the great-grandchildren of Samuel Mijan and Zini Gattegno and Abraham Mijan and Flor Molho respectively, and with a 3rd cousin, once removed for the great-great granddaughter of Isaac Mijan and Sol.

The DNA match was to the descendant of an Eliahu Itzhak Mijan, born in the 1850s, and who passed away in Volos in 1931. For years, Eliahu had been on my radar, as one of his sons eventually made his way to New York. What made this discovery even more compelling was that this son’s naturalization documents contained a photo, and the resemblance to members of my Mijan family was striking.

As it turns out, the Volos Cemetery, which has been well preserved since the early 20th century, with some stones dating back to the 19th century brought over when the previous cemetery was appropriated for development, yielded a treasure trove of information. Not only does the grave of Eliahu survive, but so do the graves of his wife, brothers, sister-in-law, nephew, mother, and father!. This grave showed that Eliahu’s father, Itzhak, was the son of an Avraham Mijan!

Photo by Alexander Ventura, memorial 248056128, FindAGrave, last accessed October 9, 2023.

The epitaph on the grave contains beautiful poetry, but genealogical speaking, the most crucial details are that his name was Itzhak, son of Avraham Mijan; that he lived to be elderly in the Jewish tradition, and that he passed away on the 10th of Kislev, 5642, which corresponds to December 2, 1881.

In a register of the deceased kept by R’ Moise Simeon Pessah, the Grand Rabbi of Volos, Itzhak is recorded as the son of Malka. With the strength of the DNA match, suggesting a likely 3rd-4th cousin relationship to my great-uncle, the question arises: Can we find any other documentary evidence to confirm this hypothesis?"

On the 27th of Muharram 1263 of the Islamic calendar (14th of January, 1847 according to the Gregorian calendar), the male census of Yenişehir-i Fener (the Turkish name of Larissa), was conducted. File NFS.d 5185 specifically captured the census of the Jews of Yenişehir-i Fener, although it is only listed as the reaya defteri, or the book of non-Muslim taxpayers (though it can also be used to refer to the wider class of lower tax paying individuals), in the archives. The census was organized by household, albeit it records no surnames, only occupation, relation to the previous individual, and age.

On the second page of the census, the following household is found:

Household 4

1. Sarraf [Moneychanger/Banker]…Avram veled [son of] Ishak, age 60

2. His son Ishak, age 30

3. The other [son] Lazar, age 26

4. Grandson Avram [son of] Ishak, age 5

5. Grandson Raphael, born later that year [and added after the original census]

While surnames are, of course, absent, the names and ages, including those of the grandsons who were alive by 1847, align with the details found for both Eliezer Mijan and Itzhak, son of Avraham Mijan. In a region where cemeteries from this period do not survive, and documentation is highly fragmented, especially before the late 19th century, it is now very likely that the Mijan family of Larissa and Volos can be outlined as follows:

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Proposed family tree of the descendants of Itzhak Mijan, who lived during the 18th century as of October 9, 2023.

Through DNA testing, traditional genealogy methods, and a touch of luck, I've uncovered the intricate branches of my family tree in areas of Greece where it appears that little survives prior to the 20th century. This article has focused on the power of autosomal testing in piecing together our genealogical puzzle- but our journey doesn't end here. In an upcoming article, we'll explore the captivating story of the Mijan family's Y-DNA, a journey that stretches from Sicily to Syria, holding the promise of more discoveries and connections on the horizon.

Big Announcement

Hollander-Waas Jewish Heritage Services is thrilled to share that co-founder, Michael Waas, has been appointed scholar-in-residence for the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society (NYG&B). He will be researching “the documentation of Jewish families in the NYG&B’s materials and produce the first-of-its-kind survey of NYG&B resources available for tracing Jewish heritage from colonial times to the present in New York State."

Read more about the project here:

https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/nygb’s-new-scholar-residence

New Christians, the Inquisition, and Genealogy

by Michael Waas

1492.

It was the eve of the onset of modernity. The old elementary school ditty,

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”

belies the enormity of this date not only for the native peoples of the Americas as the beginning of their genocide at the hands of European Colonial powers, but also the end of open Jewish and Muslim life in Iberia as they knew.

For the parents and grandparents of surgeon Gregório Lopes, this date would also be one of life-changing consequences. This article tells the story of Gregório, his wife Catarina, and their two daughters Helena and Beatriz. Gregório, who was born around 1521 in the first or second generation after 1492, would be tried just over a century later in the Inquisition Court of Lisboa, along with both Helena and Beatriz. Catarina would be tried in the Inquisition Court of Evora (a photo of which is right below). But context and background are needed to fully understand their story.

So, I invite you to come along and join me for this journey into the past.

The building where the Court of the Inquisition sat in Evora, Portugal. Photo taken by the author in June 2018.

1492 is an easy date to assign as the beginning of the Inquisition and the terror of the auto-da-fé (burning at the stake for heresy) because it ties in nicely with Columbus departing on his journey to the New World and with the Expulsion from Spain, and leaves our tale nice and neat with a bow on top. Like most easy dates in history, this is not the case.

1492 marks the Alhambra Decree and the formal expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from the newly unified and created Spain. The Inquisition in Spain began 14 years before in 1478 to ensure doctrinal uniformity of a new Catholic Spanish national identity. 101 years prior to 1492, persecution of the Jews in Iberia began in earnest with increasing numbers of converso families, many of whom were forcibly converted under threat of death. These conversos were treated with suspicion by many as not true Catholics and hounded as heretics.

Plaza Mayor in Madrid, where many auto-da-fés were held. Photo taken by the author in August 2019.

Most of the Jewish population of Spain fled with the Expulsion in 1492. Some went to North Africa, some went to the Levant, some went to the rising Ottoman Empire, and some went to the city-states of the Italian Peninsula. However, many went across the border into Portugal. Gregório’s parents and grandparents likely may have been amongst these refugees, crossing the border from Spain into Portugal. 

The sea journey was dangerous and replete with rumors and news of pirates kidnapping Jewish refugees and holding them for a king’s ransom, or even selling them into slavery. Many of the Jews in newly unified Spain, instead, went to Portugal, believing that while times were difficult, the Alhambra Decree would soon be rescinded. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares in their authoritative work, Os Judeus em Portugal No Seculo XV (The Jews in Portugal in the 15th Century), estimates the number of Jews in Portugal in 1496 at a maximum of 30,000 people based on the sisão poll tax collected that year. This is where our story truly begins.

In 1496, in order to marry the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, King Manuel I of Portugal had to extend the Alhambra Decree to his domain as part of the dowry agreement. King Manuel, of course, was not interested in expelling a large part of his population. Instead, he enacted the decree but forcibly baptized all of his Jewish subjects in 1496 and 1497 to Catholicism and thus, as new converts to the faith, they were not allowed to leave Portugal. In Spain, the Inquisition had already been active for almost 20 years, but a grace period had been instituted – no Inquisition was established for these new converts, now called the Cristãos Novos (the New Christians). This only formally ended with the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, 40 years later.

Because there wasn’t a formal Inquisition, there was no formal mechanism for prosecuting heretics and ensuring adherence to Catholicism. As a result, a distinct and enduring Crypto-Judaism developed among the New Christians. Furthermore, even though the forced baptism was meant to assimilate the New Christians by making them indistinguishable from the Old Christians in name, discrimination by Old Christians and preferences among New Christians to stay within trusted networks led to lasting divisions between the two communities.

In Spain and Portugal, in order to enter into society for powerful positions, usually one had to prove that one was of “Pure, undirtied Iberian blood” (Christian). The so-called limpieza de sangre (in Spanish)/limpeza de sangue (in Portuguese), required the person to testify as to their genealogy through their grandparents and show that they were neither of Muslim nor Jewish blood. These genealogies, while often true, could just as easily be falsified. In many cases, these genealogical examinations could go even deeper.

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Letter testifying about Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier.

Here are two examples of these documents, one from Portugal and one from Spain. 

The first one, from 1653, involves a Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier, testifying about his clean blood in order to join the military order, the Order of Christ. The Order of Christ was the surviving order of this little known group, you may have heard of, the Knights Templar (see Mesa da Consciência e Ordens, Habilitações para a Ordem de Cristo, Letra G, mç. 6, n.º 152 from Torre do Tombo, Portugal).

The second is a register of powers to members of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares to carry out the Limpieza de Sangre examination and also notes on the examinees from 1601-1608 (see Archivo Histórico Nacional, Universidades, L.706). This page includes two such examinations and their listed genealogies. The genealogies have “Father….Mother…Paternal Grandparents…Maternal Grandparents...” and the applicant testifying to their “untainted” blood.

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Folios 72v, 73r of this register from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares of Limpieza de Sangre examinations.

However, this article is not about Old Christians and Blood Purity – it’s about the fact that genealogy was not only used as a tool of entrance into high society and opportunities, but as a tool to persecute “to the ends of the Earth”. While everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition, did you know that it was, in fact, the Portuguese Inquisition that was the most brutal and targeted the Jews/New Christians the most? 

As part of an Inquisitorial prosecution, most defendants had to testify to their genealogy to the best of their knowledge. And so we return to the surgeon Gregório Lopes, his wife Catarina Lopes and their two daughters, Helena Lopes and Beatriz Lopes da Silveira. All four were imprisoned by the Inquisition, Catarina (in 1587 in the court of Evora, where she died in prison), Gregório (1594-1597 in the court of Lisboa), Helena (1593-1597 in court of Lisboa), and Beatriz (1594-1597 in court of Lisboa). Each of the files except for Catarina’s are available for full reading. 

Folio 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes. See the end of this article for an example transcription of this page.

Gregório was born in the first or second generation after the forced conversion in Portugal. According to his processo, he was born in Beja around 1521 to Manuel Afonso “o Grande” and Helena Lopes, both New Christians. At the age of 10, with a brother Henrique Lopes, he began to study to become a surgeon. At 15, together with Henrique and a Martim Rebello, they went to Lisboa to continue their studies. By the age of 19 he obtained the office of surgeon and moved to Evora and at 25, he left Evora for Beja. This is a family of surgeons; his daughters Helena and Beatriz both married surgeons. The processos of all three mentioned relatives who also are surgeons, but were unclear how they fit on the basis of reading just the genealogy section of the processo. In addition, in the typical naming pattern of Portuguese and Sephardic Jews, the daughters of Gregório and Catarina are named first for each of their mothers.

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Tree created by the author on the basis of Gregório’s, Beatriz’s, and Helena’s processos. The notation “xn/xv” (New Christian/Old Christian) was added to the spouses of known. In the processos, the wife of Diogo Manuel, Catarina Goncalves, was unclear whether she was Old or New Christian. Beatriz and Helena disagreed about which maternal aunt was married to Luis Mendes and which was unmarried. Duarte Dias em Beja and Manuel Lopes, sirgueiro, were mentioned as relatives but currently unable to tie them to the tree.

When researching Sephardic history and genealogy in the Inquisition Courts, these genealogical interrogations can be enlightening, helping to build out a fuller picture of the ways these families networked and, in some cases, can show varying levels of integration with Old Christian families. My own ancestry has examples of this, a da Veiga family from Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra, that was either wholly or mostly of Old Christian ancestry, that married with New Christians in the city of Viseu. In part 2 of this article, I will explore tracing one such family from various sources, using Inquisition, parish, notary, and Jewish communal archives to showcase what is possible with careful research.

Transcription of F. 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes

1: de a dizer. Perguntado he cuidou em

2: suas culpas como nesta mesa lhe foi mandado

3: e se as quer acabar de confessar pera com-

4: isso ser tratado com misericordia. Disse 

5: q[ue] si cuidou e q[ue] naõ he de mais lembrado 

6: e logue lhe forão feitas as perguntas

7: seguintes de sua genealogia perguntado

8: como a nome de q[ue] idade e nação he donde

9: natural e ao presente m[orad]or e as mais pergun-

10: tas gerais. Disse que elle se chama Grego-

11: rio Lopes de idade de setenta e quatro anos

12: naceo em Beja na rua davis freguesia

13: de Sancta Naria, e q[ue] morava agora na

14: granja termo desta cidade en casa de

15: Josea chanoca e ahi o prenderão e que 

16: não tem avos né avoos e q[ue] seu pai

17: se chamava Manoel Afonso o grande xrão

18: novo q[ue] fazia mantas e sua mai se

19: chamava Helena Lopes xrã nova q[ue]

20: morava na dita rua e freguesia ambos

21: defunctos e q[ue] não tem tios nem tias da 

22: parte de seu pai nem de sua mai e que

23: tem alguns parentes em Beja como he

24: Duarte Dias q[ue] tem irmaõs e alguns filhos

25: e Manoel Lopes cirgueiro, e q[ue] tem

On Sephardic Surnames

By Michael Waas

When Spain and Portugal approved their “Right of Return Citizenship” laws in 2015 for descendants of the Jews expelled in 1492 from Spain, who converted to Catholicism in the preceding century beginning with the persecutions in 1391, or who were forcibly baptized in 1496 and 1497 by rule of the Portuguese King Manuel I, interest in Sephardic genealogy grew. Many people, interested in the possibility of an EU passport, started to ask questions about if they were eligible or not by looking into their genealogies. Along came a list that purported to be an authoritative register of all Sephardic surnames, claiming that anyone who had a name on this list would be automatically eligible for Spanish citizenship through this pathway. 

Photo of the old town of Vinhais, Portugal, a place where many Sephardic Jews lived after being forcibly baptized. One of the famous Amsterdam, Livorno, and London families that came from there was the Lousada family and all of their branches. Photo taken by the author in June 2019.

Problem solved, right? “Was my ancestor Sephardic?” could be answered by this expert list, stating conclusively that your family’s surname had belonged to known Sephardic communities.

However, there was one slight issue: that list was fraudulent and a poor copy of indexing work done by the late Harry Stein, who didn’t claim that all of the surnames he indexed were belonging to Sephardic families; just that the books he consulted on Sephardic genealogy and history, had some kind of reference to the surname. Furthermore, not all of the surnames he indexed even belonged to Jews or were in exclusive use by Jews.

In genealogy, history, anthropology, and archaeology, it is always critical to ask questions of the sources you are reading, even if it is a primary source.

Unfortunately, because of lists like that, myths perpetuated by heritage tourism (“Jews forced to convert took the names of fruit trees, Catholic themes, and plants in order to ‘hide’” being one such popular legend routinely sold by tour guides and books in Spain and Portugal), and, quite frankly, inadequate teaching about the history of Sephardic Jewry, a lot of confusion exists today about Sephardic genealogy and history. With this series on Sephardic genealogy and history, I hope to shed some light and encourage people to ask questions about the past in order to better understand the present and future.

A Pear tree, which in Portuguese is “Pereira”. According to the legends, a sure sign of hidden Sephardic Jewish ancestry. In reality? Just a pear tree with hopefully delicious fruit. Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

So, what is a ‘Sephardic surname’? To put it simply, it is any surname used by someone in the Sephardic community. For the purposes of this series, I will be using the term Sephardic, exclusively meaning those with a genealogical tie to expulsees and conversos/New Christians, as well as those who joined later on. This does not necessarily include other Jewish populations who follow Sephardic traditions and approaches to Jewish law and identify as Sephardim/pan-Sephardim as well, who do not have a genealogical connection.

Unlike most other Jewish communities, surnames have a longstanding usage and tradition amongst Sephardic Jews. In the Iberian peninsula, surnames began being used in the 10th century CE, reaching popular usage by the 15th century. Jews in the Peninsula, like Catholics and Muslims, took to this new tradition readily and thus, the tradition of familial surnames predated the end of Iberian Jewry. Famous surnames like Abarbanel, Benveniste, Zacuto, ibn Yahya, and Palache could be found amongst Iberian Jews in the centuries preceding the persecutions, Expulsion, and forced conversion.

So, to return to the original question, “What is a Sephardic Surname?”

There are two main categories of surnames:

Pre-Expulsion Surnames

These surnames could be toponyms (names related to the place), Arabic names, occupations, Hebrew names, and more. Some pre-expulsion surnames include:

Abarbanel, Abensur, Aboab, Almosnino, Alsheikh, Altaras, Amarillo, Barzilay, Benaroya, Benatar, Benbassat, Bendalec, Ben Ghiat, Bensousan, Benveniste, Faraggi, Franco, Haleva, Herrera, Marcos, Nahmias, Palache, Pardo, Pesso, Policar, Saporta, Saltiel, Senior, Sion, Toledano, Valensi, Zacuto

A tax receipt from 1388 of Samuel Amarillo of Tudela from the archives of the Kingdom of Navarre (thanks to Maria Jose Surribas for sharing it). The Amarillo family after the Expulsion and forced conversion, mainly settled in Salonika, where they produced important rabbis and leaders of the community. The author is a descendant of a branch of this family, including the Hahamim Shelomo Amarillo, Moshe Hayim Amarillo, and Shem Tov Amarillo, all of whom were Chief Rabbis (Shelomo and his son Moshe Hayim in Salonika, Shem Tov in Korfu and Larissa, all today in Greece).

New Christian Surnames

These surnames were given to Jews who were forcibly baptized to become New Christians in Portugal, otherwise known as Conversos in Spain. The acquisition of surnames was simple: They were the baptismal surname of the Old Christian godparents of the Jews in 1496 and 1497. This was done in order to assimilate the New Christians and make them indistinguishable from the Old Christians. In practice, this was not really done at all, and through stigma and discrimination New Christians remained a community apart. Some examples of surnames include:

da Costa, da Fonseca, da Veiga, Delgado, Fernandes, Gomes, Henriques, Nunes, Lopes, Marques, Mendes, Pinto, Pereira, Rodrigues, Vaz…

From the Inquisition of Lisboa processo for Judaizing of Gaspar Fernandes o Gallego. In Portuguese it states “Disse que elle se chama Gaspar Frz gallego, mercador, e que christão novo de idade de sesenta e dois annos…” which means “[the Defendant"] stated that his name is Gaspar Fernandes Gallego, merchant and that he is a New Christian, aged 62 years old”. You can see the rest of his processo, here: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2312336

What’s important is that New Christian surnames are indistinguishable from non-Jewish, Old Christian surnames because they are the same. Furthermore, you can have innumerable combinations of names, including siblings with different surnames entirely, as long as the family names existed within the recent genealogy of the family. In my own research, I have a set of siblings born in Viseu, Portugal, and Bayonne and Bordeaux, France who moved to Amsterdam, London, Barbados, and possibly Newport, Rhode Island that have the surnames Mendes, Mendes Sereno/Serrano, and Nunes Mantensa. All the same generation!

Some examples of double surnames found among Portuguese Jews include:

Aboab da Fonseca, Franco da Costa, Franco Mendes, Gomes da Costa, Henriques Nunes, Lopes Pereira, Mendes da Costa, Mendes Seixas, Nunes Vaz, Rodrigues Pereira, Pardo Roques, Sarfaty Pina, Vaz Dias, Vaz Lopes, Vaz Nunes, Vaz Villareal

To sum it up, Sephardic surnames have a long and storied history. Many family names are ancient and have deep roots in Sephardic genealogy and history. Yet, the appearance of a surname in your genealogy that was used by a Sephardic family in the past and today is not an indication of an actual Sephardic genealogy and connection. Each case must be studied critically, understanding all of the data points including communities, oral histories, archives, and genetics. In my own family, we discovered that our surname’s origin lies not in a creation of Dutch Ashkenazim for the Napoleonic surname registration in 1811, but is actually a Dutchification of a Portuguese surname, Vaz, uncovering a previously forgotten and unknown history of a family that became Ashkenazi in the mid-18th century in Amsterdam. This story was only uncovered due to a deep study of YDNA and the archives of Amsterdam. 

If you think you have Sephardic heritage, please feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to provide a consult and develop a plan for researching your ancestral past. For an amazing further resource on Sephardic surnames, please see the excellent Dicionário sefaradi de sobrenomes by Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares, and Anna Rosa Campagnano, which gives an extensive list of documented surnames of Sephardic Jews and the communities they came from across the world, including archival sources. In the next blog in this series, I will discuss more on who the New Christians were, their genealogies, and their impact on Sephardic history.