DESCRIPTION:  THE GIVEN NAMES DATA BASES

3.  DESCRIPTION OF COMPUTER DATA BASES

3.1.  DEFINITION OF DATA BASE FIELDS

In this project, European Jewish given names fall into four main groups:  Legal/Hebrew (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin);  Yiddish;  local; or European secular.  An individual's particular names depended on his country of origin and with which stream of Judaism he identified: Religiously observant, Cultural, Secular, or Converted.

Using the above three groups of European Jewish names, the minimum number of GNDB fields for each record within a European country's database is thirteen, if only one foreign country of immigration existed.  Another pair of fields is added for each additional foreign country, so that with all ten foreign countries included, there are 31 fields all together.  Most fields contain multiple linked names separated by a special character.  The field titles for three foreign countries are:

  GENDER
  LEGAL NAME:           Legal/Hebrew name, Origin of name
  YIDDISH NAMES:    	Yiddish names, Yiddish nicknames, Origins
  EUROPEAN SECULAR: 	European secular names, Nicknames, Origins
  LOCAL SECULAR:    	Local secular names, Nicknames
  FOREIGN1 NAMES:   	Foreign names, Nicknames
  FOREIGN2 NAMES:   	Foreign names, Nicknames
  FOREIGN3 NAMES:   	Foreign names, Nicknames