jewish surnames?

Question

to me I find it interesting when people say you can tell by someone's name what their ethnic heritage is. I used to think think so but now It doesn't seem to be the case. For example I have known two people who have told me they were Jewish but their last names were: steel and slade two very WASPy sounding names. So what do people mean when they say a Jewish name? Names like Steel and Slade sound Anglo-Saxon.

Answer 1

There are alot of Jewish people with last names that do not sound Jewish, as well, there are alot of people who changed thier last time durring the holocaust and after when the immigrated in order to make them more pronouncable in their new country. However "Jewish" names, are often eastern european names, often polish sounding names, and names ending in stein, burg, man, etc.

Answer 2

How about:
Lewinsky/Levin/Levant/Levitch, Samuels, Isaacs, Dangerfield, Weiss/Weissman, Wiesel/Wiesenthal, Abrams, Appelbaum, Siegel, Stone, Siefert, Fried/Friedman, Berlin, Youngman, Cohen, Berg, Feldman/ Feldstein, Streisand, Morris, Einstein,
Rosen/Rosenthal/Rosenberg, Wallach/Wallace, Sandler,
Ginzberg, Bader, Kader, Baruch, Fein/Feinstein, Seinfeld, Edelman, Belsky, Jacobs, Klein/Kleinman, Bernstein, Burns, Green, Gold/Goldman, Silvers/Silverstein, Coppersmith, Greenspan, Baruch, Heifetz, Merman, Berman, Zigfeld, Adler, Aaron, Auer/Auerbach, Joseph, Nathan, Samson, Robbins, Lowe, Lehrer, Benjamin, Hahn, Newman, Kaplan, Balsam, Serling, Burstyn, Lipschitz, Berg, Haas, Simon, Garfunkel, Joel, David/Davidowitch, Bacharach, Katz/Katzowitz, Stern, Stein, Bing, Kurtzman, King, Prinz, Bloch, Freud, Serling, Guggenheim, Hirsch, Robbins/Rabbinowitz, Rubinstein, Sondheim, Gingold, Weinberg/Weinstein, Glick, Wahl, Weill, Wolff, Horowitz, Birnbaum, Gershwin, Mayer/Meyer, Salomon/Solomon

Answer 3

Their grandparents or parents most likely changed their last names...it happened often. I live in Italy, and here you can tell if someone is Jewish or if there might be a strong chance their family is/was Jewish.....whenever an Italian's surname is the name of an Italian city (Modena, Ferrara, Roma, etc.) there's a strong chance they are Jewish. I was told it was because among Jewish people they would say "Mr. X from Ferrara" or "Mrs. Y from Modena" etc. and hence the name of the city became the surname.

Answer 4

Levy or Levi is often considered a "Jewish" name because it refers to the Levites, one of the tribes of Israel. Other than that, I don't know. Samuel L. Lewis, the American Sufi master, was Jewish by heritage, but I don't think of Lewis as being a "Jewish" name.

Answer 5

They changed it