Scotland's Jews

[David]

Fascinating stuff Southeastern Scot, welcome to the forum. We are indeed all Jock Tamsons bairns.

[TheOfficialBren]

The Jewish Gordon name has been researched by myself here in Glasgow and discussed in this thread.
Gordon was a Jewish name in use Vilna, Lithuania, and Bialystok, Northern Poland. The Hebrew is גורדון and the Russian is Гордон. The name is associated with Litvak Jews and is well documentated in the areas formerly covered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
These Jewish Gordons had no connection with the Scottish Gordons, obviously, as the Scottish Gordons were seen as radical Catholics and we are discussing a time where there was not much toleration between religions.

It must be one of those phonetic anomolies then.

[neloon]

It must be one of those phonetic anomolies then.

I think it's just that, over the centuries in the UK, Jews have generally changed their surnames to blend in with the local community.

[ThistleDown]

An easy conversion. Many Davidsons were in earlier generations Davidov or Davidovich, particularly in Glasgow.

[Nathan]

I am a big fan of the recent Jewish Tartan. Quite smart looking. In addition to Gordon, there are also Jews with the name Paton and I believe it's coincidence there as well.

The Welsh and Jews have some names in common like Lewis, Davies and Cowan, for the Jewish people it referes to Lewis = Levite, Davies, Davis, David = of David and Cowan = Cohen or High Priest descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses.

As far as coincidental names go, what about the MacIsaacs and MacJacobs, or the Hebrides (similar to Hebrew?), the Jacobite rebellion and the fact the the father of the Hebrews was named "Eber" as was the father of the Irish, hence "Hibernia"...

I'm not drawing any wild conclusions from these coincidences, although some less rigorous "academics" have....

[neloon]

"Benzie" is a not uncommon Aberdeenshire surname generally said to be derived from "Benjamin" (?via "Benjie").
Jacobite is just from James . Why Jacobus is Latin for James I know not.
Hebrides in original Greek was something like "Ebudae" so I doubt that there is any connection with "Hebrew".
Alan

[Nathan]

"Benzie" is a not uncommon Aberdeenshire surname generally said to be derived from "Benjamin" (?via "Benjie").
Jacobite is just from James . Why Jacobus is Latin for James I know not.
Alan

Indeed, they went with the Latin to underline the Catholic element of their protest. Imagine if they had gone with the Gaelic... would it have been the "Hamishite Uprising"?

But I wonder where "James" comes from really. The New Testament figure, James was an Aramaic speaking Judean Hebrew whose name would be Yacov, from which we derive Jacob. This has the Greek cognate of Iakobos and thus the latin Jacobus. How this became "James" and Seamus and Hamish is still a mystery to me.

[JonathanB]

Interesting issue. I was well aware the Jews were banished from England by Edward I (Walter Scott describing the Jewish heroine Rebecca in the previous reign in his Ivanhoe) and they were allowed back by Cromwell, at which time England was not united with Scotland.

(Indeed, I really don't know the position of Scotland during the Interregnum. There had been a union of the crowns under James VI, but the crown had been cut off. Did Cromwell have any authority in Scotland?)

However that doesn't mean Jews had not been allowed in Scotland. Any ideas?

[JonathanB]

Jacobus is not so much the Latin for James, as James is the English/Scots for the name which ended up in Latin (via Greek from Hebrew I imagine) as Jacobus.

It's no more odd than Jacques, Giacomo or Iago. Words and names mutate from language to language, as the relationship of Hamish and James demonstrates.

[Nathan]

Interesting issue. I was well aware the Jews were banished from England by Edward I (Walter Scott describing the Jewish heroine Rebecca in the previous reign in his Ivanhoe) and they were allowed back by Cromwell, at which time England was not united with Scotland.

(Indeed, I really don't know the position of Scotland during the Interregnum. There had been a union of the crowns under James VI, but the crown had been cut off. Did Cromwell have any authority in Scotland?)

However that doesn't mean Jews had not been allowed in Scotland. Any ideas?

My understanding is that Jews were never expelled from Scotland or barred from living there as in England but that there wasn't a sufficient immigration "pull factor" to attract them until the more recent history of Scotland.There are no pre 17th C grave sites or civil records or synagogues that have been discovered as yet. Cromwell occupied Scotland during the third English Civil War, when the alliance between the Covenanters and the English Parliament broke down.

Jacobus is not so much the Latin for James, as James is the English/Scots for the name which ended up in Latin (via Greek from Hebrew I imagine) as Jacobus.

It's no more odd than Jacques, Giacomo or Iago. Words and names mutate from language to language, as the relationship of Hamish and James demonstrates.

Like my post above shows, Yacov, Iacobos, Jacobus... even Jacques, Giacomo or Iago...all follow a clear pattern which corresponds to similar letters. Hebrew and Greek have no "J" sound but Latin doesn't typically start names with "Y" hence "Jacobus". Even Iago is similar to Yacov given that it's not much of a shift from "c" to "g". V and B, I and Y, I and J, I and Y are all related letters and sounds. These are often used to approximate a sound when the language doesn't have an exact match. When we get to "James" the middle letter becomes an "m" and it becomes a one syllable name. While there is a Hebrew letter "Mem" it is not used in the original name, and English/Scots has two perfectly good letters with which they could render the sound of the Hebrew letter "Kuf", namely "c" or "k". This is of course evidenced clearly by the similarity between the Old Testament Biblical figure of "Jacob", and his original Hebrew name "Yacov".

While Yacov is transliterated as Jacob in the Old Testament English, it is rendered at James in the New Testament. Similarly the Name Yeshua (alt Yoheshua) is rended at Joshua in the Old Testament but as "Jesus" in the New.

My guess would be that since the Old Testament transliterations are much closer to the original names, perhaps there was a deliberate attempt to make New Testament characters seem less Jewish by drastically changing their names. I don't have a source for this.