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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : from the Yiddish personal name Fishl, literally ‘little fish’, used as a vernacular equivalent for the Biblical Efraym (Ephraim). Ephraim became associated with the fish because he was blessed by his father Jacob (Genesis 48:16) with the words veyidgu larov ‘Let them grow into a multitude’, the verb yidgu, containing the root letters of Hebrew dag ‘fish’.

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