Re: [bcn2004] Dictionary of Sephardic surnames helps to show Brazilians their roots

Dear Friends,

In the posting below the names Faiguenboim and Campagnano caught my
attention as names that have been anagrammatized from Turkish:

Name "FAIGUENBOIM", when decrypted letter-by-letter as "AI GUN OF
BEIM", is an anagram of Turkish expression "AY GÜN ÜFÜ BEIM" (AY, GÜN,
YEL BEYIM) meaning "I am Moon, SUN and Wind Lord believer".

Similarly, the name "CAMPAGNANO", when decrypted letter-by-letter as
"PAGAN CANOM", is an anagram of Turkish expression "PAGAN CANUM"
meaning "I am a Pagan Man", that is, referring to himself as a
believer of the ancient Tur/Turk Sky-God religion.

As it is seen clearly, these names have been anagrammatized from pure
Turkish expressions. It is likely that this so-called Jewish people
were not Jews but rather Turkic peoples originally. Because of the
persecution by Romans and the Church in Spain, they changed their
identity and names into Jewis sounding names. Now Jews are claiming
them as their own because of their altered names.

If the rest of the names in the preapared dictionary are similar to
these names, then it can be inferred that the so-called Jewish names
are mostly anagrammatized from Turkish expressions. As I have noted
earlier that ancient Iberians and Portuguese natives were Turkish
speaking Tur/Turk peoples. As they were persecuted by the Romans and
the Christian church, some lost their lives, some changed their Turkic
names and religion and hence, were assimilated into Christian world.
Yet some of them might have been true Jews. It is no wonder that Jews
always seeked the protection of Turkish Empires such as the Turkish
Hazar Empire, Otoman Empire and also Turkish Republic. Because of
these protections, it is no surprise that some Jews feel closer to
Turks.

Even the name IBERIA, when decripted as "BIR AI E", is an anagram of
Turkish expression "BIR AI Evi" (Bir Ay Evi) meaning "One house of
Moon-God", that is, "One house of Moon-God believers". Sumerian word
"E" meant "house" like Turkish "Ev" is. The name IBERIA must have been
coined after the spread of Christianity. Similarly, the name
PORTUGUESE, when decrypted letter-by-letter as "PER ETU OGUS", is an
anagram of Turkish expression "BIR UTU OGUZ" meaning "One Sun-God
OGUZ", or "BIR ATA OGUZ" meaning "One Father OGUZ". In both cases,
the names indicate that the ancient native peoples of these lands were
believers of ancient Turkish Oguz religion and their language was
Turkish. Above names are living proof that ancient world religion was
Turkish Sky-God OGUZ (TUR) religion and Turkish was the accompanying
language.

It is also important to note the power of having a language and a
religion of your ones own. Religion and language unite people into
unity. Anagrammatizing Turkish is another power devise which has been
used to divide Turkish peoples, change them into a different identity
and then conquer the separated groups and then assimilate them. This
is as the Turks would say it: "kuzuyu sürüden ayirma teknigi", that
is, "the technique of separating the lamb to be eaten from the herd as
the wolfs do".

Best wishes to all,

Polat Kaya


allingus wrote:
>
> Jewish Telegraphic Agency - Apr 1, 2004
> Dictionary of Sephardic surnames helps to show Brazilians their roots By
> Marcus Moraes
>
> RIO DE JANEIRO, April 1 (JTA) - A major new tool can help Brazilians learn
> about their possible Iberian Jewish origins: the Dictionary of Sephardic
> Surnames, a 528-page tome featuring some 17,000 surnames of Sephardic Jewish
> families from Portugal, Spain and Italy and their descendants. Written in
> Portuguese and English, the dictionary is the fruit of a research project
> started in 1995 by Brazilian historians Guilherme Faiguenboim and Paulo
> Valadares and Italian historian Anna Rosa Campagnano.
>
> Faiguenboim and Campagnano are Jewish. Valadares is of Portuguese "New
> Christian" - or Marrano - ancestry.
>
> According to Faiguenboim, a founding member of the Brazilian Jewish
> Genealogical Society, the initial idea was to explore about 1,000 Sephardic
> surnames. After seven years of work, the team had over 16,000 names.
>
> According to the authors, the job was inspired by Alexander Beider's
> Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, published in 1993.
> However, the Russian book dealt only with Ashkenazic family names.
>
> The percentage of Ashkenazim and Sephardim among Brazil's estimated 100,000
> to 130,000 Jews is not clear.
>
> "There are no statistics, and any data about it will have a broad margin of
> error," said Jayme Blay, president of the Sao Paulo State Jewish Federation.
>
> According to Faiguenboim, historians say that 10 percent to 30 percent of
> the Portuguese population was Jewish before Jews were forced in 1496 to
> leave the country or be baptized.
>
> Many of them fled to Northern Africa and, beginning in the early 1500s, also
> to Brazil, Portugal's major colony. According to historians, several Jews
> were among the sailors on the very first Portuguese caravel fleets to the
> New World.
>
> "The recent wish of Christians to seek so-called Jewish roots has always
> intrigued me. This phenomenon is not only Brazilian," Faiguenboim told JTA.
>
> In conversations with scholars worldwide, Faiguenboim says, he often hears
> similar stories.
>
> "I can't explain it. I don't believe that Judaism is 'in.' There are many
> serious people seeking Jewish roots, and some will find it," he says.
>
> Following its release in Sao Paulo in early January, the dictionary is
> scheduled to be released in Rio in June by the Rio de Janeiro Jewish Museum,
> the only Jewish museum in Brazil.
>
> "The museum has the role of guarding the Jewish community's memory, and the
> dictionary has everything to do with us," Max Nahmias, the museum's
> president, told JTA. "And it's not merely a dictionary, it's a book that
> tells the history of the Jews."
>
> Nahmias said numerous non-Jews have visited the museum to investigate the
> possibility of Jewish ancestry because of Sephardic family names in their
> genealogical trees.
>
> Since its founding in 1994, the genealogical society also has received
> letters from non-Jewish Brazilians telling and asking about their supposed
> Sephardic roots, Faiguenboim said. Most of them presume that they have
> Jewish ancestry because they have surnames that Jews were known to have used
> in the past to hide their Jewishness.
>
> However, such names - such as Oliveira, Souza, Cardoso, and even Silva, the
> most typical Brazilian name of all - often are common among non-Jewish
> Brazilians.
>
> Some of the names are known to be of likely Sephardic descent - mainly those
> that refer to trees and animals - but the dictionary may reveal unknown and
> unexpected origins to some bearers of New Christian surnames.
>
> Brazilian diplomat Marcio Souza, talking to a cousin about Souza's ancestors
> ' surname of Bentes, was told that it belonged to a family of U.S.
> confederates who had sought refuge in the Lower Amazon River basin after the
> American Civil War.
>
> When he told his cousin that the surname in fact was Jewish, Souza said, the
> cousin stood up and left the table.
>
> "And he never spoke to me again," Souza said. The story is featured in the
> book's preface.
>
> Faiguenboim says that not everyone with a family name in the dictionary is
> of Jewish ancestry.
>
> "But if a person is recognized as Jewish, his or her name will certainly be
> there," he said.
>
> The Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames is divided into three parts. The first
> features a historical introduction, written by Hebrew University historian
> Reuven Faingold, who explains the trajectory of Sephardim from ancient times
> until their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.
>
> The second part, written by Valadares, tells about the Sephardic dispersion
> from the edicts of expulsion until the 20th century.
>
> The book ends with the dictionary itself, preceded by an explanation of the
> names' origins.
>
> For each entry, readers can find where the first references to the family
> name were found and the name's subsequent path around the world. It also
> lists famous bearers of the family name through history.
>
> For Nelson Menda, president of the Rio de Janeiro-based Sephardic Council,
> "The dictionary is an essential work that proves the long Jewish presence in
> Brazil."
>
> The council is formed by Rio's Sephardic institutions including synagogues,
> welfare houses, a cemetery and women's groups.
>
> Born to an Ashkenazic mother and Sephardic father, Menda is proud to be
> Sephardic. His surname Menda comes from the Spanish region of Galicia, where
> his paternal family lived until they were expelled in the late 1400s, he
> told.
>
> "I believe that the expulsion was the best thing they could have done to
> Iberian Jews, who ended up meeting new cultures, learning new languages, new
> types of work, and mainly learning to live in harmony with people from other
> religions," Menda told JTA.