MLD Naming Protocols for Jewish Londoners

In 2001 a Jewish mikveh (a ritual bathing pool) was excavated by the Museum of London under a 13th-century house facing Milk Street, near the center of the Old Jewry. The neighboring house was owned by Jews: first by Leo Le Blund, and later by the four sons of Abraham. Three of the original seven steps of the bath survive and are part of the reassembled mikveh now on display at the Jewish Museum. Photo ©MOLA Photographer Maggie Cox.

Like all digital projects, MLD must standardize personal and placenames so that computer programs can identify, find, and link them to other relevant information, a requirement that is especially important in digital prosopographies. Medieval Jewish names have proved a challenge to standardize because Jews in medieval England had Hebrew names, but usually spoke French at the same time as their names were recorded in Latin by Christian scribes. Modern translators, moreover, have often anglicized Jewish names. In light of these issues, the following protocols for Jewish Standard_Names are meant to simplify standardization. Some problems remain, but the protocols facilitate name linkage even though they depart in some ways from the guidelines employed for other types of Standard_Names in MLD.

1. We follow the usual MLD practice of standardizing forenames by anglicizing them, though for Jewish names we have often chosen a standardized first name that was likely closer to the name a person actually used, as noted in the Table of Jewish Forenames below. Although the Doc_Name field theoretically notes a person’s name as it appears in the documentary source for the record, remember that Jewish names have more often than not been anglicized by editors or christianized by the medieval Latin and French sources.
2. Family relationships that are part of the name are noted in the Doc_Name field. In contrast to the usual MLD practice, they are also included in the Standard_Name when the individual is otherwise known only by a first name. Wives and widows are usually noted by their husband’s name, per usual MLD practice, unless they are given another surname, but cross-references are given to their first name.
3. Given the complications of Jewish names, their heavy reliance on patronymics and matronymics, and the absence of Jews from England after 1290 when surnames began to stabilize, we place the individual’s forename at the beginning of the Standard_Name field rather than assuming (per the usual MLD convention) that those known only by a first name have an unknown surname (which we would render with three underscores, followed by a comma and then the forename). This protocol follows recent practice by scholars of editions of Jewish sources. There are exceptions, however, for individuals in the following well-known families that normally use a surname: Crespin, le Blund, L’Eveske, Menahem, and Quatrebouches. For all other Jews who are recorded with a surname, the Standard_Name starts with the person’s first name, but a cross-reference is also given to a version in which the surname comes first in the usual MLD practice (except those with locative surnames such as ‘de Bedford’ or ‘of London’).
4. When a Jewish man was regularly called “Master” or “Rabbi” in a medieval source, we insert this title in his Standard_Name field, as well as in the Title field. This practice is unlike the norm for MLD, which requires all titles to be stripped from the Standard_Name field.

A useful explanation of Jewish naming patterns appears in “Jewish Naming Conventions in Angevin England,” by Eleazar ha-Levi, who also provides an extensive list of variations in Jewish bynames and forenames in medieval England that we drew upon in compiling the Table of Jewish Forenames. See also “Jewish Names” on the Medieval Names Archive and its accompanying annotated bibliography on Jewish names, which indicates the relatively abundant work on Jewish names on the continent (especially France and Germany) compared to medieval England. The England section of this bibliography also shows how Jewish names were treated in some of the key sources we are using, emphasizing the problems we face in standardizing Jewish names for computer data entry. Also useful for its list of standarized Jewish nanes is Index II in Paul Brand, ed., Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, vol. VI  (London, 2005).

The following table includes all Jewish forenames in the MLD dataset of Jewish Londoners. The variations also draw on material from other resources noted above, as well as comments by Dr Dean Irwin. The table excludes common Christian names used by Jewish Londoners. Many of the names are French because that was likely the common language of Jews in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England.

Table: Jewish Forenames in MLD