Kinnui
{{Short description|Secular or vernacular name user by Jewish people in the diaspora}}
{{Contains special characters|Hebrew}}
{{main|Jewish name}}
A kinnui ({{Script/Hebrew|כנוי}}) or kinui (translated as "nickname")Ben-Yehuda, Ehud and Weinstein, David. Pocket English-Hebrew, Hebrew-English Dictionary. Pocket Books, New York,1977, p. 129.)Warren Blatt "presentation first given at the 18th Seminar on Jewish Genealogy, Los Angeles, July 1998" http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/givennames/slide6.html is the secular name held by Jewish peoplePotok, Chaim. Wanderings: History of the Jews. Ballantine Books, New York, 1978Telushkin, Joseph. Jewish literacy. William Morrow and company, New York, 1991. in relation to the language spoken by the country they reside in, differing from their Biblical Hebrew name.
The religious name is in Hebrew (for example, Moses ben Maimon;{{rp|175}} Joseph ben Gershon;{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8802-josel-joselmann-joselin-of-rosheim-joseph-ben-gershon-loanz |title=Josel (Joselmann, Joselin) of Rosheim (Joseph ben Gershon Loanz) |first1=Gotthard |last1=Deutsch |first2=Alfred |last2=Feilchenfeld |encyclopedia=Jewish Encyclopedia}} Shlomeh Arieh ben David HaLevi;{{Cite web|url=http://www.cemeteryscribes.com/getperson.php?personID=I5361&tree=Cemeteries|title=BARNARD Solomon Lyon [Shlomeh Arieh b David HaLevi] b. 1845 Dover, Kent d. 20 Aug 1910: CemeteryScribes Jewish tombstone inscriptions, Find a grave Genealogy, Family History}} Gershom ben Judah; Devorah bat Avraham), and the secular name is in whatever language is in use in the geographic locality (for example, Isaiah Berlin;Ignatieff,Michael. Isaiah Berlin: A Life. Henry Holt and company, New York, 1999 Solomon Lyon Barnard; Sigmund Freud;{{Cite web|url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/|title = Freud, Sigmund | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}} Golda Meir;{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/meir.html|title = Golda Meir |work=Jewish Virtual Library |publisher=American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise}} Etta ConeGabriel, Mary, The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone. Bancroft Press, Baltimore, 2002).
History
When Jews arrived in a new country, a secular name was often chosen from the local language. In Central and Eastern Europe, Yiddish{{Cite web|url=http://www.jewfaq.org/yiddish.htm |work=Judaism 101 |title=Yiddish Language and Culture |publisher=Tracey R. Rich}} was the secular language, so a Hebrew name was used in religious and Jewish community contexts and a Yiddish name was used (the kinnuy) in secular contexts. In France, the secular name was in French; in Spain in Spanish and other vernacular languages, in North Africa and the Middle East in Arabic,{{cite web |url=http://www.genealoj.org/ENtexte/page15 |title=Jewish Surnames |access-date=2011-08-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005000224/http://www.genealoj.org/ENtexte/page15 |archive-date=2011-10-05 }} in ancient Babylon, the kinnui was in Babylonian and so on. Some kinnuim (the Hebrew plural of kinnui) sound similar to the corresponding Hebrew name, for example Mendel for Menachem, Anshel for Asher. A few kinnuim are based on the animal-like attributes of four of the sons of Jacob{{Cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/298924/Jacob|title=Jacob | Hebrew patriarch|date=28 May 2024 }} and one of his grandsons: Judah, the lion (cf. the family name Lyon, Loewe); Benjamin, the wolf (cf. the family name Woolf); Naphtali, the deer (cf. the family names Hirsch, Hersch, Harris); and Issachar,{{Cite web|url=http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/issachar.html|title=The Tribe of Issachar}} the donkeyGenesis at 49:1-27 http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0149.htm#1 (or the bear) (cf. the family names Bar, Baer, Barell, Barnard, Bernhardt, Berthold, Schulter{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11304-names-personal |title=Names (personal) |first=Joseph |last=Jacobs |encyclopedia=Jewish Encyclopedia}}); plus Ephraim, the fish (cf. the family name Fish).{{cite web |url=http://www.genealoj.org/ENtexte/page151 |title=Kinnuim-English |access-date=2009-09-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081222091621/http://www.genealoj.org/ENtexte/page151 |archive-date=2008-12-22 }}
Among Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic names were adopted, such as Ḥassan, Abdallah, Sahl; or Hebrew names were translated into Arabic, for example, Eleazar into Mansur, Ovadia into Abdallah, Matzliah into Maimun. Ibn, analogous to the Hebrew ben, was used to form a family name. Examples of this formula are Ibn Aknin, Ibn Danan, Ibn Laṭif. In the Jews of Arab lands a linguistic mixing happened and names appear with both Hebrew and Arabic elements in the same name, for example, Abraham ibn Ezra.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/IbnEzra.html|title = Abraham Ibn Ezra}} A peculiarity of the Arabic names is the kunya, the by-name given to a father after the birth of his son, by which the father is named after the son (using the prefix "Abu"). For example, Abu Yunus is a kunya for the father of a son named Jonah. "Abu" also forms family names, as in the case of Abudarham or Abulafia. The Arabic article "al" appears in quite a number of names, as in Al-Ḥarisi.
Usage
The secular name is the name that appears in civil documents. The "shem hakodesh" usually appears only in connection with Jewish religious observances, for example, a record of circumcision (brit), in a marriage contract (ketubah), a writ of divorce (get) or on a memorial stone. Often, both names appear together, e.g. Menachem Mendel, Jehuda Leib.