This piece originally ran on jewishcurrents.org. Ashkenazic Jews were among the last Europeans to take family names. Some German speaking Jews took last names as early as the 17 th century, but the ...

Over the last 100 years, there have been decades at a time when a baby name holds the top spot for most popular — ahem, Michael. Of these super popular names, many held their own for so long that they ...

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This is a preview. Log in through your library . Publisher Information The University of Illinois Press is one of the leading publishers of humanities and social sciences journals in the country.

It’s easy to forget that place names are all just words at the end of the day, and so—just like words in a dictionary—they all have histories, etymologies, and origin stories of their own. The history ...