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• WHAT IS OUR FAMILY NAME?

  Horwitz, Horowitz, Gurevich, Guravich, Hurowitsch, Gurewitsch, Hurwitsch, Hurwitz

  The Answer is All of the Above.

  HORWITZ is the version most the members of our family took when they came to Chicago 1905-1908. Max took the last name Hurwitz one of Eliah and Gutta's son's took the name Gurevitch. Nathan and his family who stayed in Riga used the name Gurewitsch. Abe's sons Harry and Bernie later changed Horwitz to Howard.

• WHY SO MANY VERSIONS OF THE SAME NAME?

  Our family members lived in a part of the world which from time to time was dominated by Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia and other governments.

  They were required to spell their surname in the current local language. Some of these languages did not have a soft "H" sound to start a name so they used a "G". The "v" sound was spelled with the letter "w". Instead of "itz" their version would be "itch" (sometimes spelled "itsch" or "ich".).

  The vowel sounds for the first and second "o" came out as "a", "e", "u" as well as "o".

  Sometimes the second "o" sound would be swallowed up and disappear.

  While there are family members with tombstones that spell the family name in Hebrew characters HORVITZ they more commonly used the second vowel sound HOROVITZ.

  Phonetically HOROVITZ becomes  ГУРЕВИЦ  in Russian which transliterates to English as GUREVICH.

• GUREVICH = HOROWITZ

  • Alexander Beider, has this to say about Gurevich “(common in Mogilvev gub., Vitebsk, Rezhitsa, Lepel’, Borisov, Bobrujsk, Riga, Poltava gub.)  Rabbinical, see Gorovits.” – The geographical areas he mentions are all around Riga and Southwest around Minsk, Belarus, within 200 to 300 miles of Riga.

  • This is Dr. Beider's comment on Gorovitz. "This is a Rabbinical surname. From the town of Hořovice (Horowitz in German) (Bohemia) The founder of the family Horowitz (traditional spelling of this surname in Latin characters) was Isaiah ben Moses Ha-Levi (died 1517), who lived in Prague. His grandson Abraham moved to Poland and dwelt in Kraków (cracow) and Lwów (Lemberg, L’vov), where he was elected judge of the province (EJ, 8:983-84). The members of the family Horowitz are considered Levites." Click here to read the actual entry.

  

  • Click on Photo above to find out where our family name comes from. You will be transferred to pages prepared by the World Wide Horowitz Families Association based in Israel. To return to these pages click on link to FamRoots Home.

  • We know that our family name since about 1500 was taken from the city in the Czech Republic just outside of Prague by the name of HOROVICE.  (See the information below.)

• We have thought that the we were related to the famous rabbinical family that had come from Girona, Spain that had previously used the surname of Ha-Levi. However, our Y-Chromosome DNA does not go back to Spain at all. It goes back to Siberia.

Jump to Topics on This Page

Gurevich = Horwitz

Origin of Horowitz Surname

Russian Jewish Names

Henoch Hirsh - Jewish
First & Second Names

Russian Jewish Names

• A Hebrew Name – The Religious Name

• A Yiddish Name – The one they probably used on a daily basis and was their “real’ name when they were living in Europe.

• A Russian Name – This would be the name they used on their official records for dealing with the government (army, passport, etc.)

• American Name – If they came here to live they usually took an English

• Nick Names – Many of the full names had abbreviated forms or more endearing forms

• German Name – This might be the translation of their Yiddish name into Latin letters

• Click Here for an Authoritative Discussion of Russian Jewish Names by Dr. Alexander Beider.

Henoch Hirsh Horowitz
First & Second Names

• There are variations of his name according to the members of our family. However, they are all variations of the Bible name translated into English as Enoch.

• In Yiddish his name was pronounce more as Khenoch or Khenech. We are using Henoch in this record because so many of his grandsons were given first names starting with an "H" in his honor.

• The Russians replaced the H sound at the start of his name with a "G" and he appears in the historical records as Genech.  On Abe's Russian passport his Patronymic was Genehov.

• His middle name was Hirsch. Since there were several other of his relatives in Rezekne who also had the first name og Henoch he may have gone by Henoch-Hirsh to distinguish him from his cousins and uncles. See the additional discussion of this popular name in the column to the right.

The Deer as a Hebrew Symbol and Name - Hirsch
 

• Dr. Beider explains that the deer is a reference to such names as Hirsch, Herschel, etc. The deer is a symbol of the tribe of Naphtali, Jacob's sixth son whose mother was Rachel's handmaid (Genesis 30: 7-8). The Talmud states: "Be as enduring as the tiger, as free as the eagle, as fleet as the deer, as strong as the lion, so as to fulfill the will of your Father in Heaven."  Source is Struan Robertson's website on Hamburg History.