Goldfoot Genealogy

 Nadene Goldfoot             The shoe for a Gold Foot.                              

   A gold Nike shoe.  That's what I need, especially since Nike is situated in Portland, Oregon. 

Gold/Goldman/Gulden may derived from Golda; Malkov from Malke; Perlman — husband of Perl; Rivken — may derive from Rivke; Soronsohn—son of Sarah.

When Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire were required to assume last names, some chose the nicest ones they could think of and may have been charged a registration fee by the authorities. 

Other names, chosen or purchased, were combinations with these roots: Blumen (flower), Fein (fine), Gold, Green, Lowen (lion), Rosen (rose), Schoen/Schein (pretty) — combined with berg (hill or mountain), thal (valley), bloom (flower), zweig (wreath), blatt (leaf), vald or wald (woods), feld (field).

 Last names were made up. Silversmith = the father at the time of forced naming worked as a silver worker, which in Yiddish is a silverschmidt. As i am sure you have figured out the same goes for Goldsmith, and Pewtersmith etc. Jews were limited by laws in various locations to certain professions, so their is a preponderance of similar names.

Gold is a popular prefix to our name.  Ours is Goldfoot which was Goldfus, found in Lithuania which must have started in Germany.  The German spelling is Golduss; Yiddish being Goldfus. The following names were listed in my "The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.  I chose the 1st person of each surname.  

1. Gold was a Ze'ev (Wolf) born 1889, a Zionist leader, moved to Palestine in 1935.

2. Goldberg, Abraham b: 1883 in Russia

3. Goldberger, Joseph b: 1874, USA

4. Golden, Harry b: 1902 USA

5. Goldenberg, Eliezer, b:1846 Russia

6. Goldenthal, Jacob, b: 1815 Vienna, Austria

7. Goldenweiser, Alexander b: 1880  Russia

8. Goldfaden, Abraham b; 1840  Romania, founder of Yiddish theater

9. Golding, Louis, 1895, England

10. Goldman, Edwin 1878 USA

11. Goldmann, Nahum 1894 Russia

12. Goldmark, Karl 1830, Hungary  

13. Goldschmidt, Lazarus  1871  Lithuania

14. Goldsmid, Asaron  1781  settled in England

15. Goldsmith, Lewis 1763  England

16. Goldstein, Eugen 1850-Germany

17. Goldstucker, Eduard 1913 Czech

18. Goldwyn (Goldfish) Samuel 1882, USA

19. Goldziher,, Ignaz 1850  Hungary

20. *** Goldfoot, Stanley  1914, South Africa, Chief of Intelligence of Stern Group of Palestine

       not in encyclopedia but should have been 

21 Goldener,  surname on tree of DNA match

I've been able to go back to Iones Jonah Goldfus about 1730 in Telsiai, Telsiai, Kaunas, Lithuania.

Ashkenazic Jews were among the last Europeans to take family names. Some German-speaking Jews took last names as early as the 17th century, but the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe and did not take last names until compelled to do so. The process began in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1787 and ended in Czarist Russia in 1844.

Eastern and Central European Jews by and large did not have surnames until 1798 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire made German language surnames obligatory. Shortly thereafter Czarist Russia also mandated surnames. The story goes that the name bureaucrats would give the Jews nasty names like Schweinhund, and then Jews would have to pay for some thing nice like Goldstein. In any case the fact that surnames were chosen rather than passed down over centuries led to names derived from precious metals, gemstones, trees, flowers, and similar pleasantries.

This also accounts for the fact that in general Ashkenazic Jews are not particularly attached to their surnames and change them readily. Anti-Semitism also helped in the changing surname department.

In attempting to build modern nation-states, the authorities insisted that Jews take last names so that they could be taxed, drafted, and educated (in that order of importance). For centuries, Jewish communal leaders were responsible for collecting taxes from the Jewish population on behalf of the government, and in some cases were responsible for filling draft quotas. Education was traditionally an internal Jewish affair.

Until this period, Jewish names generally changed with every generation. For example, if Moses son of Mendel (Moyshe ben Mendel) married Sarah daughter of Rebecca (Sora bas Rifke), and they had a boy and named it Samuel (Shmuel), the child would be called Shmuel ben Moyshe. If they had a girl and named her Feygele, she would be called Feygele bas Sora.  Berg refers to a town or Jewish settlement. Gold- is a reference to actual gold. When they chose surnames, precious metals and gems were common because they're pretty and valuable. Colors and professions, like Schwartz (black), Green, and Schneider (shoe-maker or tailor or something?), were also common choices.

 Jewish people in Europe weren't allowed in the guilds. This caused them to be excluded from most professions such as carpentry, tanners, painters and more. A lot of the Jews were well educated and they became bankers or goldsmiths which made them quite rich. This in turn resulted in even more discrimination and hate towards the Jews.

In the Middle Ages, Jews lived in Central Europe where Yiddish, a language derived mostly from High German, became their vernacular, which they kept even after being forced East into the Slavic countries. Berg, which is from the German word for mountain, became a popular suffix for locations and for people. It's not strictly a Jewish name or suffix. For example, Prince Philip's family, before Anglicizing their name to Mountbatten, was named Battenberg, and as a branch of the royal family of Denmark, they definitely weren't Jewish.

Resource:  

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/01/ashkenazi-names-the-etymology-of-the-most-common-jewish-surnames.html

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Jewish-surnames-include-names-of-different-metals

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-Jewish-surnames-have-silver-in-them

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1n3h08/why_do_so_many_jewish_people_have_gold_silver_or/

Labels: Gold, Jewish surnames, Nike shoe