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Although the Jewish people did not have a physical homeland for many hundreds of years, the two main languages, Hebrew and Yiddish, have a heritage of over 8,000 years and 11 centuries respectively. Jewish surnames have a large number of spelling variations because they were influenced by the different languages of the countries in which the bearers lived. Let’s take a look at a couple of common Jewish names.

The name Simons, or Simmons is derived from the Hebrew forename Shimn, which in turn is derived from the word ‘shama’ which means ‘harken’. The coat of arms for the name Simons is a gold shield with a fox running on a green mound.

Another common Jewish name is Cohen which is the occupational surname for a priest. Traditionally, priests were considered to have been members of a hereditary casts descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses. However, not all bearers of the name Cohen belong to this caste. When many Jews were forced to join the Russian army for a term of 25 years, a number of them changed their name to Cohen because members of the clergy were exempt from army service. The family coat of arms is a blue shield with a silver bar running horizontally across the centre, three silver stars along the base, and a sun at the top.