The Jews of North Africa: Demography and Onomastics

Les juifs de l'Afrique du Nord : démographie et onomastique is a work published in Algiers in 1936 by Maurice Eisenbeth (1886-1957), then Chief Rabbi of Algiers. It is the first systematic study of the Jewish populations of North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — based on colonial censuses, communal registers and a methodical survey of surnames. The work is divided into two main parts. The first, demographic part establishes the numbers, geographic distribution and communal structure of North African Jews at the turn of the 1930s, drawing on the French, Spanish and Italian statistical data available at the time, cross-referenced with local rabbinical archives. In it, Eisenbeth describes, town by town, the major communities (Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Tunis, Fès, Casablanca, Tripoli…) as well as dozens of more modest communities of the oases, the Atlas and southern Tunisia. The second, onomastic part constitutes the enduring core of the work and accounts for its legacy. In it, Eisenbeth compiles an annotated catalogue of several hundred surnames borne by the Jews of North Africa, indicating for each: its probable etymology (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Berber, Judeo-Spanish, Italian or toponymic), its spelling variants, its area of geographic diffusion and the notable rabbinical or merchant lineages that bore it. He draws on first-hand documentation — ketubot registers, rabbinical court records, synagogue offering lists, cemetery epitaphs — and undertakes the first typological classification of Judeo-Maghrebi family names: biblical names, priestly names (Cohen, Levi), Iberian toponyms inherited from the 1492 expulsion (Toledano, Narboni, Corcos), Maghrebi toponyms (Tetouani, Mrejen, Fezzani), descriptive Arabisms (Abitbol, Dahan, Chriqui), occupational surnames (Sayag, Neggar), and specifically rabbinical surnames. By its method as much as by its scope, this work remains, nearly a century later, an essential reference for North African Jewish genealogy and for research on Maghrebi Jewish identities. It has informed all subsequent studies — Paul Sebag, Robert Attal, Joseph Tolédano, Michaël Laskier — and represents, for tens of thousands of families of North African origin, the gateway to the history of their name.

Twenty centuries in two curves

Jewish population and world population, from year 1 to 2025 — the data of the site’s reference page.

Explore the reference page (milestones, method and sources) →

Sources & resources

• Maurice Eisenbeth, Les juifs de l'Afrique du Nord : démographie et onomastique, Imprimerie du Lycée, Alger (1936)
• Maurice Eisenbeth, Le judaïsme nord-africain : études démographiques sur les Israélites du département de Constantine, Imprimerie Braham, Constantine (1931)
• Maurice Eisenbeth, Pages vécues, 1940-1943, Imprimerie Charras, Alger (1945)
• Joseph Tolédano, Une histoire de familles : les noms de famille juifs d'Afrique du Nord des origines à nos jours, Ramtol, Jérusalem (1999)
• Paul Sebag, Les noms des juifs de Tunisie : origines et significations, L'Harmattan, Paris (2002)
• Haïm Zeev Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, E.J. Brill, Leyde (1974)
• Michel Abitbol, Histoire des juifs : de la Genèse à nos jours, Perrin, Paris (2013)