Changing Names of Jewish Students at the Jagellonian University in Krakow in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

The subject of the paper is the phenomenon of changing "Jewish" names to "European" ones among Jewish students at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in the second half of the nineteenth century. The regulations in force at the time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire precisely determined the procedure for granting and changing names. Progressive processes of acculturation and assimilation meant that individuals no longer wanted to have the names with a specific Jewish sound.

There were attempts to bypass the formal difficulties by making changes via facti. This

phenomenon remains elusive in sources. The well maintained and organised documentation of the Jagiellonian University (the so-called pedigrees and student catalogues at the faculty and Senate level) allows for its study for at least a part of the secular Jewish intellectual elite of Galicia forming in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

Several models of the process of changing the name can be discerned. The most popular seems to be a gradual shift from a "Jewish" to a "Polish" name. First, new names were added to the original name / names, then the order of names was changed. The name originally used was moved to a further-back place to be eventually abandoned altogether.