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I need to know if any of my surnames are Jewish.?

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I need to know if any of my surnames are Jewish.?

Here are the names : Snider, Beck, Koroski, Baroski, Epps, Clement. If any of these names are Jewish please let me know. Thanks!

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Alas Michael, it is impossible to say based on just the current names. Many Jewish families changed their names after arriving in the US. Smith has often been shortened from Goldsmith or Silversmith or even changed from obviously Jewish names. Baroski could have been Barosky in the past but without immigration records one can't say. My wife's family has Jacobs (an obvious Jewish name) in it, but they don't practice the religion.
You'll have to do a lot of digging if you want to be sure of any part of your ancestry.

To be fair, Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch ("son of Daniel," common for Russian and other Jews in Slavic language-speaking countries), Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky (a common Jewish surname in Slavic countries), and Bob Dylan as Robert Allen Zimmerman, a common German one. Ashkenazi Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe took German, Polish, Russian, etc. surnames. Superficially, no, those names don't look Yiddish or Jewish at all. You'll have to determine their country of origin first by researching ships logs and then determine the city your ancestors in which your ancestors last lived. Then, you look up synagogue or church records. Have fun!

Based on the phonotactical structures of the names you mentioned, I can affirm that none of them is Jewish because their ending sounds are not "-el" or "-n", not to mention that "Koroski" and "Baroski" sound apparently Russian, and "Clement" is a Christian name.

Well, there are certainly Jews with those names.

Then again, there are Jews named Douglas (Kirk and Michael). There are Jews named Brooks (Mel). There are Jews named Dylan (Bob).

What's in a name, really?

You'll want to start going back in your family heritage to find your Jewish heritage. Try Ancestry.com---they give you a free trial, but if you like that kind of stuff, you may get hooked!

http://www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.htm
http://www.last-names.net/Articles/Jewis...
http://gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMon...
http://home.earthlink.net/~dchapin/list1...

Try these sites, they may help

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