Dominican Scholar Senior Theses Student Scholarship 5-2019 Name Fluidity and its Effect on Ashkenazi Genealogical Research Meredith Dreyfuss Dominican University of California https://doi.org/10.33015/dominican.edu/2019.HCS.ST.05 Survey: Let us know how this paper benefits you. Recommended Citation Dreyfuss, Meredith, "Name Fluidity and its Effect on Ashkenazi Genealogical Research" (2019). Senior Theses. 114. https://doi.org/10.33015/dominican.edu/2019.HCS.ST.05 This Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Dominican Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Dominican Scholar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Meredith Dreyfuss HCS 4910 Senior Capstone Project Instructor: Dr. Chase Clow Reader: Robert Bradford Name Fluidity and its Effect on Ashkenazi Genealogical Research It is commonly believed that genealogical research has become easier and more popular than ever before, and with more and more records being digitized and available over the internet, the ability to research family history can be done by anyone with an interest and a computer. Where one might have had to travel to the places that housed the records that trace family life, now many of those records are online, with the data store growing all the time. Similarly, relatively inexpensive DNA testing is bringing family background and history to the masses. However, while science and technology have revolutionized genealogical research, it can still be very difficult to research one’s family history. Specifically, for Ashkenazi Jews, those from Central and Eastern Europe, there is a history of name changes, both given and surname, which makes the search for one’s ancestors a difficult challenge.