Onomastics of Kosovo-Metohijan Jews

In the past, there never existed a numerous Jewish community in the area of Kosovo and Metohija. Regardless of that, personal names of Kosovo-Metohijan Jews can be traced from their earliest documented presence. Most of the material on Kosovo-Metohijan Jews’ onomastic still dates from the period between the two world wars, when this population was at its peak in numbers and when it was most deeply incorporated into certain social systems or state apparatuses. The traditionally settled Sephardic population of Kosovo and Metohija usually used Biblical and Sephardic personal names exclusively. Family surnames were also of the same origins. Some smaller modifications in the morphology of surnames would take place after the Balkan wars and the First World War, or during the integration of the lands the Jews inhabited into Serbian and Yugoslav state structures. These changes reflected in the Serbianization of the already existing surnames by adding a suffix which is characteristic for Serbian patronymics. Even though there existed limited sources of personal names, the Kosovo-Metohijan Jews did not show any sense for diversity. Namely, there were only some names that were most often in use and became typical. Unlike the Kosovo-Metohijan Sephardim, rare Ashkenazi individuals who lived in Kosovo and Metohija between the two world wars predominantly carried the names of a German basis, while their personal names were of Hebrew or European language background. New changes in the onomastic field emerged in cases of arranging ethnically mixed marriages and converting.