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Jewish Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz Families

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Top Surnames

Lipkowicz, Lipschitz, Lipshitz, Livshitz and 10 others
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Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lime_Blossom.jpg

This project site provides a place for information and discussion about all Jewish families with the surname Lifshitz, Lipschitz, Lipshitz, Lifschitz, Lipschutz and their variations.

The challenges of genealogy for these families are great. Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz and their variants are relatively common Jewish surnames. The surnames' origin or origins are not clear, and it is unknown how many different founding families generated today's lineages. The genetic genealogy search strategy of looking among DNA matches for a common surname is made particularly complex by the diversity of spellings. Anglicization of the surname is frequent, into forms including Lewis, Lewin, Lifton, Lipman, Lipton, Lauren and others. Despite these challenges, many families succeed in finding relatives.

This project's front page will include links to online resources specifically relevant to these families, and the associated discussion forum encourages mutual aid in exploring our relations. The forum is public, but creating a Geni account (free) is required for posting.

Contents

Origins

Some proposed origins for this surname and variants are:

One documented rabbinical lineage carries the surname Lipschütz and variants, originally described in the book "Heshiv Reb Eliezer and Siach Hasadeh Neweet" published in 1755 (source). Read the Jewish Encyclopedia online article for more information.

Are there any non-Jews with this surname? There is an anecdote of an Israeli diplomat telling David Ben-Gurion, "I will change my name if you can find me one non-Jew named Lifshitz." Sources: "Some preliminary notes on Israeli family names" by Professor Gershom Martin, Weizmann Institute of Science (http://www.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israelinames.txt). Also, p. 91 in "Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language" by Norman Berdichevsky (McFarland, 2014).

Surname Variant Count

The set of surname variants below, with the number of Geni profiles for each surname, provides evidence for how common each variant probably is worldwide. Limits are that some people include multiple surname variants in profile names, the pool of Geni profiles offers a limited pool for sampling, and that some profiles are counted for birth surnames while others for married names. These numbers represent a very loose approximation of the worldwide proportions. This set will not include the derived anglicized versions.

If you know a name that should be included in this listing but is not, please post a note here. The surnames in this project's name ("Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz") were selected somewhat arbitrarily for having over 1000 representative profiles on Geni at the time the project was founded.The lists below will be updated occasionally, and the last update was 20 July 2016. The counts of profiles come from a "quick search" of that surname, which performs a search of more name data fields than just surname (e.g. alias & alternative names), and therefore the count is higher than a search upon the surname data field alone.

Alphabetically

  • Lifchitz 139
  • Lifschitz 1261
  • Lifschutz 260
  • Lifshitz 3640
  • Lifshutz 160
  • Lifszyc 60
  • Lipschitz 2576
  • Lipschutz 1229
  • Lipshitz 1864
  • Lipshutz 248
  • Lipsit 23
  • Lipsitt 35
  • Lipsitz 599
  • Lipszyc 866
  • Livshitz 419
  • Livshutz 16

By Number of Geni Profiles

The total number of profiles in this list is 13,256. For comparison, there are 152,574 profiles at Geni matching the Miller surname at the time of this count. It would be interesting to count the number of Cohen (and variant) profiles, but the Geni search system quits looking after 5,000 matching profiles and several Cohen variants exceed that -- there are at least 40,000 Cohen-Cohn-Cahn-Cone-Kohn-Kahn-Kagan-Kohen-Coen profiles at Geni.

Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz Lineages on Geni.com

This list is not complete, but at least attempts to present most of the major lineages found here. Lineages marked "TUC" appear in the book "The Unbroken Chain," by Dr. Neil Rosenstein.

Notable People Lists, Off-site

Other Online Resources

The following resources focus specifically on Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz and variant surnames. If you have additions to suggest, please post a note here.

This section does not include all family projects that happen to include members with these surnames, only ones for which the focus is on the Lifshitz-Lipschitz-Lipshitz-Lifschitz-Lipschutz or variant surname. However, if your family does include such members, and you would like to attract and contact possible relatives, you are encouraged to review and post to our discussion forum. It is strongly suggested that the subject of your forum post include the specific surname spellings that your family members used, and the place or places they immigrated from if known.

Surname Projects and Other Resources (multiple families, possibly related)

Surname + Region Projects and Other Resources (multiple families, possibly related)

Family Lineage Projects (descendants from a particular couple)

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