Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.009 May 26, 1994 1) Fonye (Jules Levin) 2) Vern-constructions (Holger Nath) 3) Yiddish first names (Anno Siegel) 4) Yiddish first names (Zachary Baker) 5) Yiddish first names (Holger Nath) 6) Priziv vs. priyut (Bob Rothstein) 7) Er freyt zikh in Kovne (Rick Gildemeister) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 25 19:44:49 1994 From: JFLEVIN@UCRAC1.UCR.EDU Subject: Fonye An amusing sidelight on this impolite term for the Russian is that the WWII Russian army slang (and probably WWI as well) for the Germans was "Fony". This of course is nothing more than the 'von' that was so common in German last names. I wonder if any Jewish soldier ever reflected that he was fighting the "Fony" along side "Fonye". --Jules Levin 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 25 23:02:11 1994 From: n6@columbia.edu Subject: vern-constructions Thanks for your comments, Dovid. I had noticed and mentioned those inconsistencies in word order. Still, it came up several times in a relatively short list of Russian aspectual pairs, so there must have been some reason behind these choices. When I have more time, I'll check some more aspectual pairs. The change in word order is not the only way the compilers of the Russian-Yiddish dictionary used to express aspectual differences, besides prefixation. Some of the glosses distinguished between a ZAYN vs. a VERN construction, imperfective the former, pe rfective the latter. Others used VERN + Positive (shvakh vern, imp.) vs. VERN + comparative (shvakher vern, perf.). But again not completely consistent. The explanations you gave for shift in focus, follows patterns in Yiddish with regard to prefixation. I noticed that the more the author is interested in stressing a certain event in a story (i.e., the more 'in focus' it is), the more the verb is marked, usually by prefixation. Changes in word order then would be another way of doing that. Holger Nath 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu May 26 03:37:38 1994 From: anno4000@w172zrz.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE Subject: Re: Yiddish first names In Mendele 4.008 lew@bnr.ca (pierre (p.) lewis) wrote: >Is there any standard work (that I can expect to find at the McGill >library where they have thousands of Y books) that contains a list of >[the more common] Yiddish first names... Salomon A. Birnbaum _Grammatik der Jiddischen Sprache_ has an appendix containing lists of the most common eastern Yiddish first names, female and male names being listed separately. The names are given in Hebrew characters. I don't have the book with me, but I think no further explanations or equivalents in other languages are given. This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but maybe it helps. Regards, Anno Siegel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 25 20:52:35 1994 From: BM.YIB@RLG.Stanford.EDU Subject: Jewish/Yiddish names There have been a number of queries regarding sources for first names among Eastern European Jews. Here are some suggestions: Alexander Harkavy's "Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary," 2nd ed. (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1928; reprinted by Schocken and YIVO, 1988), includes a section on Jewish names and their English equivalents (pp. [525]-530). His explanations are not 100% reliable and his list is incomplete; nevertheless, it is the most widely available source that I know of, on Yiddish forenames. Under "Zishe," for example (p. 527), there is a cross-reference to "Zisye," whose "English" equivalent is given as "Zissia," without any further glosses. Another name that is close in sound to Zishe and Zisye is "Zusye" ("English" equivalent: Zussia; also unglossed by Harkavy). And then there is the masculine name "Zisl," an apparent diminutive of "Ziskind" (since they are listed together by Harkavy) -- "English" equivalents: "Zissl" and "Zisskind." These are glossed by Harkavy: "Zisl un Ziskind vern tsugegebn tsu dem nomen Aleksandr" -- i.e., they are associated with that name (but may not actually derive from it). Is it possible, then, that Zishe, Zisye and Zusye are variants of the masculine Zisl? The feminine name "Zisl" and its variants "Zisle" and "Zise" are not glossed by Harkavy but are given the following equivalents: "Zissl," "Zissla," "Zissa (Dulcia)." The last item does bear out the seemingly obvious connection of the feminine Zisl with Yiddish "zis" (sweet). Harkavy, however, distinguishes between the masculine and feminine names without discussing whether they share a common etymology. "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire," by Alexander Beider (Teaneck, NJ: Avotaynu, 1993), deals -- as its title indicates -- with surnames. But since many of these are formed on the basis of forenames this can be a useful source for explaining them. Beider's "Dictionary" is a work of prodigious scholarship (close to 800 pages of very small print); it should be pointed out that Beider is not a Yiddish specialist, and some of his glosses may be erroneous. (I did not have a chance to check his book for "Zishe," etc.) "A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History," by Benzion C. Kaganoff (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), is unfortunately not very strong in its coverage of traditional Eastern European Jewish names. For Hebrew names, there is the famous "Idish verterbukh" by the poet Yehoash and Dr. Khayim (Charles) Spivak (New York: 1912; 1926). The title is a misnomer; it is a dictionary of Hebrew elements in Yiddish, and among these elements are Hebrew first names (pp. [319]-325) and family names (pp. [326]-330). While the Yehoash-Spivak dictionary is in some ways dated (as is, for that matter, the 1928 Harkavy), it deserves to be reprinted, with a new introduction (since the story behind it is probably quite interesting -- the co-authors met, I believe, in Denver, where Dr. Spivak was on the staff of a tuberculosis sanatorium and Yehoash was one of the patients); it is not widely available these days. There is much more to the bibliography of Jewish and Yiddish names than I have listed here; this was just a forshpayz. Zachary Baker 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 25 23:04:18 1994 From: hn6@columbia.edu Subject: first names Yiddish first names: Harkavy's amerikanisher brivnshteler (New York 1902), pp. 227-236 lists first names in Yiddish/Hebrew and the English equivalent (however no pronunciation of the Yiddish). Stankiewicz, Edward. 1980. "The derivational pattern of Yiddish personal (given) names" in : _The field of Yiddish: studies in language, folklore, and literature. Fourth collection_. Herzog, Marvin I.; Kirshenblatt-Gimlett, Barbara; Miron, Dan; Wisse, Ruth Philadelphia: ISHI, pp. 267-283 It has list of names and derivations of first names, although no Hebrew spelling. Holger Nath 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 25 23:25:33 1994 From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Priziv vs. priyut Alice Honig (4.007) is right in understanding _priziv_ (from Russian _prizyv_) as 'draft' in the song "Yoshke fort avek," but she is wrong in identifying it with the word _priyut_ (also from Russian) cited from an Iza Kremer song by Rick Gildemeister (4.006). The song Rick referred to is known variously as "Dem ganefs yikhes" or "Vos bistu kotenke/ketsele baroyges." The last line of the version in Kipnis's collection is "Un genumen bin ikh fun priyut" ("And I was taken from the orphanage"). Bob Rothstein 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu May 26 09:23:57 1994 From: EEGLC%CUNYVM.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Er freyt zikh in Kovne One of the curious phenomena in Yiddish is the element of superstition. Because it Northeast Yiddish voynen is pronounced veynen, you find the keyn-aynore formulation replacing the "unsafe" term. Ikh veyn in Kovne becomes Ikh frey zikh in Kovene. This phenomenon is well-known, but among what sector of the population did this occur? There is possibly a class distinction, too. I know a man who speaks Polish Yiddish, but it doesn't sound at all grating, as it usually does when a shadkhen from Galitsye is parodied on the stage. His family was quite balebatish, and his parents had assimilated names but not anything relating to Christianity. His words come out soft and clear. But the Litvaks have their "coarse" language, which is done to the hilt by Menashe Skulnick To get back to the main point, among whom did one find these superstitions? Rick Gildemeister ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.009 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. 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