TRANSCRIPTION OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY
EUROPEAN JEWISH GIVEN AND SURNAMES
FROM YIDDISH AND ASHKENAZIC HEBREW

The Late Professor G. L. Esterson
Ra'anana, Israel

This document presents standards for transcribing 19^th-century European given and surnames from Yiddish and Ashkenazic Hebrew to Latin characters.  The standards are especially designed and intended for on-line data bases and documents that will be searched using Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, for either Yiddish or Hebrew names.  The development of these Standards was part of research to create given names data bases for Ashkenazi Jews in fifteen European countries, and ten foreign countries, using archival records and other sources containing Yiddish and Hebrew given names.

For written text, the Yiddish/Hebrew Transcription Standard uses modified versions of the YIVO (Yidish Visnshaftlekher Institut) Yiddish Standard, and of the Hebrew transcription standard of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, Israel.  For both, the Yiddish/Hebrew Transcription Standard emphasizes:

   1. Compatibility with D-M Soundex
   2. Compatibility with classical transcriptions
   3. Reconstruction of the original Yiddish and Hebrew names
   4. Flexibility in presenting Yiddish dialectical variations in
      European countries, as well as recording Standard written Yiddish.

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*   [] These letters occur only in words derived from Hebrew or Aramaic.
**  Trill the tip of the tongue or uvula.
*** The unpronounced hey is not written (Sara).

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