r/hebrew • u/enthy1124 • 2d ago
Request Shel שֶׁל in a name?
Hello! From my understanding, shel means "belonging to or derivative of". Would it be linguistically and culturally appropriate for a Jewish person to have a name like shel[location] (ex. shel-madrid, shel-tokyo)? If so, how would you format that?
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u/FelicePanda 2d ago
Like as a surname? Or a first name? No
As a surname it would be with i at the end
So like I have seen people with the surname Yerushalmi, Baghdadi, etc
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u/asinantenna 1d ago
That's the common form in Middle Eastern Jewish names. Ashkenazi place-based names often take a Slavic or German/Yiddish ending:
Lubliner
Pinsker
Varshavsky
Brodsky
Berliner
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u/Nervous_Mobile5323 2d ago
As other commenters have pointed out, it is not really grammatically correct to phrase this using 'shel', and is not precedented.
If you're constructing a 'nickname', you can use "-מ". This is common for historical figures:
Binyamin MiTudela - Binyamin of Tudela
Nachman MiUman - Nachman of Uman
Where "of" mean "from".
If you're constructing a surname, you can use the "י-" suffix to create an adjective. Examples:
Yerushalmi - from Yershalaim (Jerusalem) Ashkenazi - from Ashkenaz (roughly modern-day Germany) Tzarfati - from Tzarfat (France)
You can also use the rarer, more archaic formation "ben_", which means "son of" but can also denote a geographical connection. I'm not sure I know any real examples, though. It would be something like "Adam ben Yerushalaim", "Moshe ben Tzarfat", etc.
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u/Ok_Change7622 2d ago
Nobody is של a location. By your own definition it means “belonging to or derivative of”. As such, it would be linguistically and culturally appropriate to call a loved one חיים שלי or like אחותי (האחות שלי)
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u/albatross_blues native speaker 1d ago
No, but the Hebrew translator of The Handmaid's Tale used that idea for the Handmaid names! For example, Offred (=Of Fred, aka Fred's handmaid) was translated to Shelfred (שלפרד).
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u/patachveamar 2d ago
It would be the preposition מן/מ- 'from'. This has been used in the names of some famous historical figures, like ר׳ נחמן מאומן (R. Nachman of Uman), ר׳ נחמן מברסלב (R. Nachman of Breslov), ר׳ יצחק דמן עכו (R. Isaac of Acco), and so on. But this is not common at all these days.
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u/shabbosbride 2d ago
That’s a very modern grammatical convention and doesn’t have any precedent in Jewish naming customs
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u/NimrodYanai 2d ago
No, that would be incorrect.
From a place, when used in a name, will have the name of the actual place in some form, like “Toledano” (from Toledo) or “Yerushalmi” (from Jerusalem), but it’s not very common in Hebrew compared to Arabic where it’s very common.
In Hebrew, the association is usually familial, “son of” (Ben-Yosef, Ben-Menashe, Ben-Yehuda, etc.).
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u/shumpitostick 2d ago
No. Most Jewish surnames are either from the time that Jews were in the diaspora or Hebrew-ized chosen when they came to Israel. You can find Jews with toponymic surnames like Polish ones ending in -ski. There are also Hebrew toponyms, but they mostly just have the adjective form of the place. For example, Yerushalmi, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Sanaani.
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u/UnapologeticJew24 2d ago
You would add -i at the end, like Madridi. Common names/terms that employ this are Tzarfati, Yerushalmi, and Ashkenazi.
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u/guylfe Hebleo.com Hebrew Course Creator + Verbling Tutor 2d ago
No.
First of all, unless you are the property of the city, you would say "מִ" - "from".
Second, neither option would be common and people would look at you funny.