Noach: Ashkenaz and Teutonic Jews
When detailing the descendants of Noah’s son Japheth after the Great Flood, the Bible reports that Japheth has a son named Gomer (Gen. 10:2, I Chron. 1:5), and Gomer had a son named Ashkenaz (Gen. 10:3, I Chron. 1:6). In that context, the word Ashkenaz appears twice in the Bible, plus a third time when the prophet Jeremiah foretells that Babylon will be conquered by Persia as punishment for the Babylonian role in the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, nothing that among the peoples that will help the Persians will be the Kingdom of Ashkenaz (Jer. 51:27). In post-Biblical times, the term Ashkenaz came to refer what we broadly call Germany and to the Jews who originate from that area. In this essay, we will encounter various terms used throughout the ages by Jewish sources in reference to “Germany.”
Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto, better known as Shadal, was one of the first scholars to point out that the Biblical Ashkenaz has nothing to do with Germany. Instead, in his comments to Gen. 10:3, Shadal offers two explanations as to what the Biblical name Ashkenaz originally referred: First, Shadal argues that Ashkenaz refers to a specific nation that lived in the area of Armenia (next to modern-day Turkey and Georgia). In line with this explanation, he cites in the name of a scholar named Ilasse that the second word in the Ancient Greek name for the nearby Black Sea — Pontus Euxinus or Pontus Axenus — is actually cognate of the Biblical term Ashkenaz. (Rabbi Ernest Klein in his etymological dictionary of English also mentions this explanation in his entry on the word Euxine).
Alternatively, Shadal writes in the name of his son Filosseno Luzzatto (1829-1854) that Ashkenaz refers to the Asuciandae or Ascantii people, whom Pliny the Elder mentions as having lived in the vicinity of the Sea of Azov. These people might be the same peoples that Strabo (who lived a generation before Pliny) calls the Sittaceni.
Interestingly, Shadal asserts that the fact that Germany is colloquially referred to as "Ashkenaz" has nothing to do with the Biblical Ashkenaz, but is rather a borrowed usage that people decided would be applied to a different geographical location than its original meaning. I discussed a similar phenomenon in my book Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness, & Hebrew (published by Mosaica Press), whereby Medieval Jews referred to Slavic/Czech lands and language as Knaanic (“Canaanite”), even though the original meaning of that term clearly referred to the ancient middle eastern tribes who occupied the Holy Land before the Jews conquered it.
The earliest rabbinic sources identify Ashkenaz as simply “Asia” (see Targum Yerushalmi/Neofiti to Gen. 10:3, Targum Rav Yosef to I Chron. 1:6, and Jerusalemic Talmud Megillah 1:9), but that can mean a lot of different things, especially given the fact that in ancient times Asia Minor (in modern-day Turkey) was also called “Asia” and was home to many different types of peoples. The more accepted approach in scholarly circles maintains that the Biblical Ashkenaz referred to the Iranian Scythians, who were an Indo-European nation who lived just across the Eurasian Steppes. Those people were called Ashkuza (also spelled Ashguza or Ishguza) in Akkadian, and Saka in Old Persian. In other sources, Ashkenaz is identified with an Italian king named Ascanius, who appears in Greco-Roman mythology. The Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) lexicon of Hebrew suggests that Ashkenaz refers to the Ascanians (with the -az element at the end of the word reflecting the Armenian patronymic suffix).
If you look at Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews (Book I Chapter 6), he writes: "Of the three sons of Gomer, Aschanax founded the Aschanaxians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians." This should give us another clue as to what the term Ashkenaz originally referred, but the problem is that the identity of the Rheginians is quite unclear. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in The Living Torah (to Gen. 10:3) offers four ways of explaining who these people were and where they may have lived: Firstly, he notes that some associate Rheginians with Rhegium (modern-day Regga), which is located on the tip of the Italian peninsula and was the capital of the Italian Brutii. Secondly, he connects that term to Rhagae/Rages, which was a major city in Ancient Medea, just south of modern-day Teheran (in Iran). Thirdly, he suggests identifying the Rheginians with the peoples of Regnum Polemonis, which was southeast of the Black Sea (he sees this explanation as most in line with the Talmudic identification of Ashkenaz as Asia). Finally, he offers that perhaps Josephus refers to the Rennus/Rhine River area in Germany, which actually fits with the way the term Ashkenaz came to be used in Medieval Hebrew.
The anti-Semitic German philologist Wilhelm Gesenius writes that given the Bible's association of Ashkenaz with Gomer, Ashkenaz must refer either to a nation that sprung from the Cimmerians (whom he identifies as Gomer, see below) or a province within their country. I refer to Gesenius as anti-Semitic because in the context of discussing the name Ashkenaz/Ashchenaz, he writes: "The modern Jews understand it to be Germany, and call that country by this Hebrew name, which is only to be attributed to their wonderful ignorance of geography." Gesenius does makes an interesting point in noting a similarity between Ashkenaz and the Babylonian/Chaldean name Ashpenaz borne by an administrator in Nebuchadnezzar’s royal court (Dan. 1:3).
From all the sources I’ve looked up, I’ve only come across two that actually parse the word Ashkenaz as though it were natively Hebrew/Semitic. First, Rabbi Yaakov Emden in Eim L’Binah dissects the word Ashkenaz as a portmanteau of the words mishkan (“dwelling place”) and ziv (“splendor”), ostensibly referring to Ashkenaz as the dwelling place of the crown jewels of the Jewish People. Of course, Rabbi Yaakov Emden himself lived in the area colloquially called Ashkenaz. Second, in Alfred Jones' The Proper Names of the Old Testament Scriptures Expounded and Illustrated (London, 1856), it is claimed that Ashkenaz means "so fire is scattered.” He parses the word as a portmanteau of the Hebrew words aish ("fire"), the letter KAF ("so/like"), and nazah ("scattering/sprinkling"). I would love to know the source of Jones’ exegesis and what other etymologies have been proposed.
By the time of the French scholar Rashi (who lived in the eleventh century), the term Ashkenaz already referred to “Germany,” as Rashi refers to the German language as Leshon Ashkenaz (for examples, see Rashi to Sukkah 17a, Gittin 55b, Bava Metzia 73b, and Chullin 93a). Similarly, the Talmud (Ketubot 77a) refers to a person whose occupation was to gather dog manure, and Rashi (there) commentated that while at first he did not understand the purpose of this job, when he was "in Ashkenaz" he saw people soaking their clothes in dog doo for a day or two before cleaning them. In this context, Ashkenaz clearly refers to geographic region wherein lied Worms, the German city where Rashi studied Torah before returning to his French hometown of Troyes. While Ashkenaz originally referred specifically to the area now known as Germany, Jews who migrated from West Europe to Central and Eastern Europe after expulsions from Germany, France, and England exacerbated by the Black Plague continued to consider themselves Ashkenazic.
The Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 10a) and Jerusalemic Talmud (Megillah 1:9) identify the Biblical Gomer with Germamia (which is something of an anagram of Gomer). The Vilna Gaon emends the Talmud to read Germania (instead of Germamia), which is clearly a reference to the area once known as the Roman province of Germania (see also the Vilna Gaon’s comments to Negaim 2:1 and Hagahot Yaavetz to Megillah 6a). Germamia/Germania also appears in Targum pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Yerushalmi (to Gen. 10:2) and Targum Rav Yosef (to I Chron. 1:5), but seems to be translations of the term Magog (Gomer's brother), rather than Gomer (see Yefeh Einyaim to Yoma 10a). Rabbi Nathan of Rome in Sefer he-Aruch puts to rest any questions about Germamia might mean by explicitly writing that it refers to “what we call the Land of Ashkenaz.” Indeed, in Modern Hebrew, the standard term for “Germany” is Germaniya.
By the way, the name Gomer also comes up elsewhere in the Bible: When Hashem commanded the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, he married a woman of ill repute named Gomer bat Divlayim (Hos. 1:1-3).
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (The Living Torah to Gen. 10:2) offers a summary of the different ways of identifying the descendants of the Biblical figure Gomer, including the idea that they were the Cimmerians, a group of ancient people who originally lived around the Black Sea. He also cites other sources that suggest that Gomer’s descendants include the Franks or Gauls. The Franks were ancestors of modern-day Germans and French, and thus provide another connection to Germany. Additionally, he mentions other sources who identify the Cimmerians with the Cimbrians, a tribe from Jutland (around modern-day Denmark), who were part of the Teutonized Celts. The Cimbrians were also considered to be connected to Germanic tribes. Finally, some identify the descendants of Gomer with the Phrygians, who were driven from their land by the Cimmerians. The Phrygians later settled in Galatia, which was conquered by Gauls, who were, as mentioned above, a tribe with Germanic connections (see also Kovetz Yeshurun vol. 17, page 845 and onwards).
There is another term associated with what we call Germany — “Lotir/Lothar.” This term comes up in many early sources: For example, Rabbeinu Tam (cited in Tosafot to Bava Batra 74a) mentions something he heard from the "Elders of Lothar," which refers to the well-established Jewish settlements in the German towns of Mainz and Worms. His older brother Rashbam (to Bava Batra 150b, 158b) likewise mentions "my masters in Lothar," and the term Lothar also appears several times in Tosafot (e.g., Brachot 18a and Pesachim 105a), as well as in many other Early Ashkenaz sources. The term even appears in Rashi’s responsa and in his Sefer HaPardes. Even later, Rabbi Shlomo Luria (in responsa Maharshal §29) describes Rabbeinu Gershom Meor HaGolah (who lived in Mainz in the generation before Rashi) as one of the "sages of Lothar." In 1881, Joel (Julius) Muller published a compendium of Halachic responsa from Old Ashkenaz entitled Teshuvot Chachmei Tzarfat V'Lotir.
In order to appreciate where this term Lothar comes from, I need to give you a brief overview of the history of the area in discussion: in the year 451, the Franks achieved a decisive victory over the Roman Empire, marking the beginning of their rise to power in what would later become medieval Europe. Over the ensuing centuries, Frankish rulers expanded their influence across vast territories, culminating in the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814), who united much of continental Europe under his rule and established the Carolingian Empire. According to Jewish tradition, the Jews who founded the core Ashkenazi community came from Italy by Charlemagne’s invitation.
Upon Charlemagne's death, his empire was divided among his heirs, which led to further fragmentation over time. One of the key figures in this lineage was his grandson, Lothair I (795–855), who inherited a vast portion of the Carolingian Empire, which included the Middle Francia territory. Before his death in 855, Lothair I divided his lands among his three sons, with his second son — Lothair II (835–869) — inheriting the central portion of Middle Francia. This region was then named after him and therefore became known as Lotharingia (Lotharingia in Latin, or Lothringen in German), meaning "Lothar's realm." It was around this time that Rabbeinu Gershom’s teacher Rabbeinu Yehudah Leontin came to Mainz, which was within the area of Lotharingia, and thus called Lotir in Early Ashkenaz sources.
Over time, Lotharingia became known simply as Lorraine, particularly in French, and it played a critical role in the territorial disputes and wars between the French and German kingdoms over the ages. Lorraine, by the way, is the etymological source of the given name Loraine/Lori and the family name Luria. In a 2008 article published in Yerushateinu, Rabbi Yosef Prager argues that the term Lothar was used by Jews to refer to the entire Rhineland area (including the major Jewish centers Worms, Speyer, and Mainz), and was not limited to the polity known to history as Lotharingia. For a scholarly treatment of the terms Lothar and Ashkenaz, see Professor Rainer Josef Barzen's paper "West and East in Ashkenaz in the Time of Judah he-Hasid" (2021).
But we’re not done yet. In French, Germany is called Allemagne, and in Spanish, Alemania. Where does this name come from? It seems that Alamanni was a confederacy of Germanic tribes who joined together as the Western Roman Empire was experiencing its final decline. In some languages like French and Spanish, the Almanni lent their name to the entire region of what we call Germany. The term Alamanni literally means “all people” in proto-Germanic (alle means “all,” and mann means “man”). As expected, the term Alemania is used primarily by Jewish exegetes from Spain and France.
Interestingly, Rabbeinu Efrayim (to Gen. 10:3) writes that Biblical Ashkenaz refers to inhabitants of France along the Seine River, while Elisha (mentioned in the next verse) refers to Almenia (i.e., Germany). On the other hand, Radak (to Gen. 10:3) writes that Gomer and Ashkenaz refer to Alemania (Germany), even though elsewhere Radak (to Obad. 1:20) famously speculated that the inhabitants of Almenia/Ashkenaz are actually Canaanites who escaped Joshua’s conquest of the Holy Land.
The German term “Deutschland,” meaning "German land," derives from the Old High German word diutisc (theodiscus in Latin), rooted in the Proto-Indo-European word teuta, which means "people/folk." This etymology is reflected in several languages, with deutsch in German and tedeschi in Italian. Some argue that an earlier term for the Germanic peoples was Ascenos, which evolved into Tuiscones and eventually Teutons. The term Teuton itself derives from Proto-Indo-European tewtéh₂ or Proto-Celtic towtā, both meaning “people” or “tribe” (see Rabbi Aharon Marcus’ Keset HaSofer to Gen. 10:3 who writes that Runic scripts were differentiated from Latin script, by calling Runic scripts diutisc).
Grimm’s Law, which describes sound shifts in Germanic languages, is relevant here. It explains the interchangeability between the t-sound in the beginning of words like taytsh (Yiddish for “rendering in German,” i.e. translating), teutonic, and tadeschi with the d-sound in the beginning of the word deutsch. If you ever wondered about why the Italian scholar Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (who wrote Ho’il Moshe, Otzar Nirdafim, and more) has a double surname, now you can realize that Tedeschi and Ashkenazi both mean the same thing — “German.” Intriguingly, the word “Dutch” shares this origin, although it has come to denote a distinct group today.
Finally, the term yekke is often used in Yiddish slang to refer to Jews from Germany and sometimes even the rest of Western Europe. Yekkish Jews are stereotypically characterized as unwavering and punctual to a fault. It is traditionally understood that the etymology of the word yekke lies in the German word yak ("jacket"), and is based on the fact that Western European Jewish typically dressed in modern short jackets, in contrast with the more traditional attire of Eastern European Jews who typically wore long coats/frocks. Professor David L. Gold from University of Haifa wrote a 1981 essay entitled "The Etymology of Yiddish Yeke" (available online), which considers other etymologies for this sometimes-derogatory term.
