society
names for Germany
אשכנז · גרממיא · גרמניא · לותיר · אלמניא · גומר
Bottom line
Ashkenaz in Tanach is a person and a kingdom (Bereishis 10:3; Yirmiyahu 51:27), and should be left as the name Ashkenaz, never rendered "Germany"; Shadal states outright that the Biblical Ashkenaz has nothing to do with Germany, and that the later usage borrows an old name for a new place. From Rashi onward it does mean Germany, and leshon Ashkenaz means German. Germamia (the Vilna Gaon: Germania) is Chazal's name for that land; Lotir is the Rishonim's own Rhineland; Almenia is Alemannia.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| אשכנז | ashkenaz | Ashkenaz; Germany | a name in Tanach, a country from Rashi on (Shadal: unrelated) |
| גרממיא | germamia | Germania | Chazal's word (Yoma 10a); emended to Germania by the Vilna Gaon |
| לותיר | lotir | Lothar, the Rhineland | the Rishonim's home region: Mainz, Worms, Speyer |
| אלמניא | almenia | Alemannia | the Spanish and French meforshim's word, behind Allemagne |
| גומר | gomer | Gomer | Ashkenaz's father; identified with Germamia by Chazal |
Where the authorities disagree
What the Biblical Ashkenaz was. The earliest rabbinic sources say simply "Asia" (Targum Yerushalmi and Neofiti to Bereishis 10:3; Targum Rav Yosef to Divrei HaYamim I 1:6; Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9), which in antiquity could take in Asia Minor and much besides. Shadal (there) gives two possibilities: a nation living near Armenia, citing in the name of a scholar called Ilasse that the second word of the ancient Greek name for the Black Sea, Pontus Euxinus or Pontus Axenus, is a cognate of Ashkenaz (Rabbi Ernest Klein mentions the same in his English etymological dictionary under Euxine); or, in the name of his son Filosseno Luzzatto, the Asuciandae or Ascantii, whom Pliny the Elder places near the Sea of Azov and who may be the people Strabo, a generation earlier, calls the Sittaceni. The column reports that the more accepted view in scholarly circles is the Iranian Scythians, called Ashkuza (also Ashguza, Ishguza) in Akkadian and Saka in Old Persian; other sources identify Ashkenaz with Ascanius, an Italian king of Greco-Roman mythology; and the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon suggests the Ascanians, taking the final -az as an Armenian patronymic suffix. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (The Living Torah there), from Josephus's "Aschanax founded the Aschanaxians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians," lists four candidates: Rhegium at the tip of the Italian peninsula; Rhagae in Media; Regnum Polemonis southeast of the Black Sea, which he prefers as fitting Chazal's "Asia"; and the Rhine region, which fits the medieval usage. Rabbeinu Efrayim (there) is the outlier: Ashkenaz is France along the Seine, and Elisha is Almenia; Radak reads both Gomer and Ashkenaz as Alemania. The Bottom line leaves the name untranslated.
Whether Germamia glosses Gomer or Magog. Yoma 10a and Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9 give Germamia for Gomer, close to an anagram of the name, and the Vilna Gaon emends to Germania, the Roman province (see also Negaim 2:1, and Hagahos Yaavetz to Megillah 6a). But Targum pseudo-Yonasan and Targum Yerushalmi to Bereishis 10:2, and Targum Rav Yosef to Divrei HaYamim I 1:5, appear to use it for Magog, Gomer's brother (so Yefeh Einayim to Yoma 10a). Rabbi Nathan of Rome settles the practical question in Sefer HeAruch: Germamia is the Land of Ashkenaz. In Modern Hebrew the standard word for Germany is Germaniya.
Whether Ashkenaz has a Hebrew etymology at all. The column says that of all the sources it consulted only two parse the word as though it were natively Hebrew or Semitic. Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Eim L'Binah) reads it as a portmanteau of mishkan and ziv, ostensibly the dwelling place of the crown jewels of Klal Yisrael, and the column notes that Rabbi Yaakov Emden himself lived in the area colloquially called Ashkenaz. The second is Alfred Jones, The Proper Names of the Old Testament Scriptures Expounded and Illustrated (London, 1856), who claims it means "so fire is scattered," from aish, the letter kaf, and nazah; the column says it would like to know Jones's source and what other etymologies have been proposed.
The German philologist Wilhelm Gesenius, whom the column calls anti-Semitic and quotes to that effect ("The modern Jews understand it to be Germany, and call that country by this Hebrew name, which is only to be attributed to their wonderful ignorance of geography"), holds that since the pasuk ties Ashkenaz to Gomer it must be a nation sprung from the Cimmerians or a province within their country. The column also credits him with an interesting point: the closeness of Ashkenaz to Ashpenaz, the name of an administrator in Nevuchadnetzar's court (Daniel 1:3).
Distinctions
Ashkenaz (אשכנז)
Three occurrences in Tanach: Yefes's grandson through Gomer (Bereishis 10:3; Divrei HaYamim I 1:6), and the kingdom of Ashkenaz among the peoples who will help Persia against Bavel (Yirmiyahu 51:27). By the eleventh century it means Germany: Rashi calls German leshon Ashkenaz (Sukkah 17a, Gittin 55b, Bava Metzia 73b, Chullin 93a), and on Kesubos 77a he says he did not understand the dog-dung gatherer's trade until he was "in Ashkenaz" and saw people soaking clothes in it for a day or two before cleaning them; he had learned in Worms before returning to Troyes. The name stayed with the Jews who moved on from the West into Central and Eastern Europe after the expulsions from Germany, France and England that the Black Plague made worse. Radak (to Ovadiah 1:20) speculates that the people of Almenia are Canaanites who fled Yehoshua.
Shadal's point that the later usage simply borrowed an old name for a new place has a parallel the column draws from its own book Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness, and Hebrew: medieval Jews called the Slavic and Czech lands and language Knaanic, "Canaanite," though the original term plainly meant the ancient tribes of Eretz Yisrael.
Gomer (גומר)
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (The Living Torah to Bereishis 10:2) collects the identifications of Gomer's descendants: the Cimmerians, who lived around the Black Sea; the Franks or the Gauls, the Franks being ancestors of the modern Germans and French; the Cimbrians of Jutland, a tribe of Teutonized Celts, on the identification of Cimmerians with Cimbrians; and the Phrygians, driven from their land by the Cimmerians and settled in Galatia, which the Gauls later conquered (see also Kovetz Yeshurun vol. 17, p. 845ff). Separately, Gomer is also a woman's name in Tanach: Gomer bas Divlayim, whom Hoshea was commanded to marry (Hoshea 1:1-3).
Lotir (לותיר)
Charlemagne (d. 814) united much of continental Europe, and by Jewish tradition the Jews who founded the core Ashkenazi community came from Italy at his invitation. His empire was divided among his heirs; his grandson Lothair I (795-855) held Middle Francia, and Lothair I's second son Lothair II (835-869) inherited its central portion, which took his name as Lotharingia (Lothringen in German), later simply Lorraine, itself the source of the name Loraine and the family name Luria. Mainz lay within it, and it was around then that Rabbeinu Gershom's teacher Rabbeinu Yehudah Leontin came there. The Early Ashkenaz sources call the region Lotir, which Rabbi Yosef Prager (Yerushaseinu, 2008) argues covered the whole Rhineland, Worms and Speyer and Mainz together, and was not limited to the Lotharingia known to history: Rabbeinu Tam on "the Elders of Lothar" (Tosafos to Bava Basra 74a); his older brother the Rashbam on "my masters in Lothar" (Bava Basra 150b, 158b); Tosafos to Berachos 18a and Pesachim 105a; Rashi's responsa and his Sefer HaPardes; and the Maharshal (§29), who calls Rabbeinu Gershom Meor HaGolah, of Mainz in the generation before Rashi, one of the "sages of Lothar." Joel (Julius) Muller published a compendium of Old Ashkenaz responsa in 1881 under the title Teshuvos Chachmei Tzarfas V'Lotir, and the column points to Professor Rainer Josef Barzen's 2021 paper "West and East in Ashkenaz in the Time of Judah he-Hasid" for a scholarly treatment of Lotir and Ashkenaz together.
Almenia (אלמניא)
From the Alamanni, a confederacy of Germanic tribes that formed as the Western Roman Empire went into its final decline; the name means "all people" in proto-Germanic (alle, all, and mann, man), and in French and Spanish it came to cover the whole region, hence Allemagne and Alemania. The form is used chiefly by the meforshim of Spain and France.
Deutsch, Tedeschi, yekke
Not Hebrew, but the column carries the German side of the name through. German Deutschland, "German land," goes back to Old High German diutisc (Latin theodiscus), rooted in the Proto-Indo-European teuta, "people, folk," which also gives German deutsch and Italian tedeschi. Some argue an earlier term for the Germanic peoples was Ascenos, which became Tuiscones and then Teutons; Teuton itself is traced to Proto-Indo-European tewteha or Proto-Celtic towta, "people, tribe." (Rabbi Aharon Marcus, Keses HaSofer to Bereishis 10:3, writes that Runic script was distinguished from Latin script by calling it diutisc.) Grimm's Law accounts for the t of taytsh, teutonic and tedeschi against the d of deutsch, and Dutch shares the origin though it now names a different people. So Tedeschi and Ashkenazi are the same word in two languages, which is why Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi, author of Ho'il Moshe and Otzar Nirdafim, carries both. The Yiddish yekke, for a Jew of Germany and sometimes of Western Europe generally, stereotyped as unbending and punctual to a fault, is traditionally understood to come from German yak, jacket, Western European Jews having worn short modern jackets against the long coats of the East; Professor David L. Gold of the University of Haifa canvassed other etymologies for this sometimes derogatory word in a 1981 essay, "The Etymology of Yiddish Yeke."
Rendering guidance
- Trap: "Germany" absorbs Ashkenaz, Germamia, Lotir and Almenia alike, and in a Chumash context it is an anachronism besides. Leave the Biblical Ashkenaz as a name and let a note carry the discussion.
- Leshon Ashkenaz in Rashi is "German," not "Yiddish."
- Lotir is best kept as "Lothar," glossed "the Rhineland communities."
- Ashkenaz against Sefarad as customs stays "Ashkenaz" and "Sefarad."
- Germamia in a Gemara keeps the Gemara's form, with the Vilna Gaon's emendation in a note rather than silently printed.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Noach: Ashkenaz and Teutonic Jews," What's in a Word?, 1 Cheshvan 5784 (2024-11-02): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11563-noach-ashkenaz-and-teutonic-jews.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 10:2-3; Divrei HaYamim I 1:5-6; Yirmiyahu 51:27; Ovadiah 1:20; Yoma 10a; Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9; Megillah 6a; Kesubos 77a; Sukkah 17a; Gittin 55b; Bava Metzia 73b; Chullin 93a; Bava Basra 74a, 150b, 158b; Berachos 18a; Pesachim 105a; Negaim 2:1; Daniel 1:3; Hoshea 1:1-3; Sefer HeAruch; Eim L'Binah; Yefeh Einayim; Maharshal §29; Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, The Living Torah to Bereishis 10:2-3; Kovetz Yeshurun vol. 17. The article's non-traditional citations (Gesenius, both his identification of Ashkenaz and his contempt for "the modern Jews," together with the column's own credit to him on Ashpenaz; Brown-Driver-Briggs; the Akkadian Ashkuza and Old Persian Saka; Pliny and Strabo; Josephus; Alfred Jones; Joel Muller; Professor Rainer Josef Barzen; Professor David L. Gold; and the Proto-Indo-European derivations of Teuton) were previously dropped from this entry and have been restored to the body.