Talk:Siegel
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Siegel as a Jewish name is derived from the Hebrew 'Segan Levi' meaning a Levite of the second rank.
[edit] Famous Siegels list?
what did user 1523 do with the list of famous siegels that used to be on the siegel page? AJseagull1 08:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Siegel is a Jewish Name not for Ireland
Most Jewish Siegels are from Russia (familes that never lived in Ireland) They are almost always members of the tribe of Levi. What source can you quote that Siegel was passed from Germans to Jews in Ireland?
[edit] Siegel (Russian Jewish) not related to Siegel (German)?
Can the author document this claim? My surname is Siegel, and I am descended from Russian Jews. My extended family all has Germanic surnames (Rosenthal = rose valley; Mehlman = mill man; and so on); they all spoke Yiddish, which is mutually intelligible with German; and there is no known connection to Sagan/Chagall/the Levis. Occam's Razor suggests that, at least in my family's case, the name is German for seal, and that there was a strong Germanic language presence in the part of Russia from which they emigrated.
The Segan Levi explanation seems to be taken from segal.org, which hedges its bets a good deal more than the current page's author does.
- In response to this comment, I have changed the page to say seperate origins instead of unrelated. AJseagull1 23:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate your effort, but "separate origins" and "unrelated" are pretty much the same thing. Unless you have specific sources that you can cite, it would be more accurate to say "there is some evidence that the German and Jewish names have separate origins." Wikipedia calls this "weasel wording" and discourages it, but I think it's advisable when one cannot, for historiographic reasons, have full access to the relevant facts.
I just re-read segal.org; it says "In English, Segal is pronounced as 'Seegl,' sounding the same as the unrelated name Siegel, used by non-Levites." Not "Siegel, used by Germans"; "Siegel, used by non-Levites." So segal.org takes a position different from saying that Segal is a Jewish name and Siegel a German one, and that the two are unrelated. The blurring could have occurred anywhere; many Germans are partly of Jewish descent; many Jews are partly of non-Jewish German descent; and many Jews took German-sounding names for self-protective reasons. It is difficult to make any clear statement based on this very limited information. And we don't know what segal.org's sources are. Thanks for listening. -Larry Siegel
11/11/07 I did not mean to suggest the evisceration of the page that has taken place. It contained much valuable information which is now gone. I just wanted to encourage the author to differentiate between known and speculative explanations. -Larry Siegel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.13.251.216 (talk) 08:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
