Scrabble?! HEBRAIZATIONS

Definitions of HEBRAIZATIONS in various dictionaries:

The Hebraization of surnames (also Hebraicization) (Hebrew: עברות‬, Ivrut, "Hebraization") is the act of adopting a Hebrew surname in exchange for their diaspora names. For many diaspora Jews who migrated to the Land of Israel, taking a Hebrew surname was a way to erase remnants of their diaspora experience and to assimilate into a new shared identity as Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Jews (Jewish residents of Ottoman Palestine and Mandatory Palestine) and later as Israeli Jews (Jewish citizens of the independent State of Israel.) This name-change typically did not apply to Mizrahi Jews who came from neighboring countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Egypt. Mizrahis usually kept their surnames. This phenomenon was especially common among Ashkenazi Jews, because many such families only acquired permanent surnames (rather than patronyms) when surnames were made compulsory by the November 12, 1787 decree by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II. By way of contrast, Sephardi Jews from the Iberian peninsula often had hereditary family names since well before the Spanish Expulsion (e.g., Cordovero, Abrabanel, Shaltiel, de Leon, Alcalai, Toledano,...) Very few Hebrew surnames existed before Hebraization, such as Cohen (priest), Moss (Moses) and Levi (Levite). Names ending with -berg, -stein or -man are often thought of as Jewish, but are of German origin, while suffixes such as -sky and -vitz are Slavic. Similarly, a few Hebrew surnames, such as Katz, Bogoraz, Ohl and Pak are in fact Hebrew acronyms, even though they sound and are often perceived as being of foreign origin (in these cases, from German, Russian, Polish and Korean, respectively). The Hebraization of surnames is a unique phenomenon to the Hebrew language. This process began as early as the days of the First and Second Aliyot and continued after the establishment of the State of Israel. The widespread trend towards Hebraization of surnames in the days of the Yishuv and immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel was based on the claim that a Hebrew name provided a feeling of belonging to the new state. There was also the wish to distance from the lost and dead past, and from the forced imposition of foreign (e.g. German) names in the previous centuries.This process has not ended: among the thousands of Israelis who currently apply for legal name changes each year, many do it to adopt Hebrew names.