Call me Ishmael…Or Not: An Onomastic Lens into Jewish Society on Venetian Crete, 1300–1500

At first glance, Cali, the widow of Anastasius, could be the “everywoman” of Venetian Crete. Her name is Greek, as is her late husband’s. Cali and Anastasius are among the most common names on this medieval island. Yet when we encounter Cali in a 1301 notarial act she appears anything but typical. She is emphatically marked in the document as a Jew, iudea. Anastasius was also a Jew, though his name meant “resurrection,” which made it popular among Greek Christians. Yet Cali and Anastasius were also names which Cretan Jews often gave their own children. 

This paper looks at the social history of the Jews of Venetian Crete, analyzing how they functioned as a marginalized people on the periphery of Christendom. Crete in this period was an economic hub, and a mediator between east and west. Jews embodied this locus of mediation. Immigrating to Crete from Grecophone lands, western Christendom, and the Levant, Jews were attracted by commercial opportunities and relative freedom. Yet scholarship has generally neglected this community. This paper redresses this neglect by offering preliminary findings on one measure of Jewish identity, naming practices, as an entrée into larger questions of Jewish self-representation and inter-communal interaction. In specific, I employ notarial acts to treat the choices made by Jews to name their children Hebrew, Latin, and/or Greek names, using these naming patterns as a cipher for the role gender and communal identity played in religio-cultural interactions. My early studies point to significant gender dichotomies. Female Jews in Crete often held Greek names. Men maintained either Hebrew names or unusual Greek versions of Hebrew names (e.g. Anastasius: a quasi-translation of Elyakim, “God raises up”). This paper addresses the significant implications of such naming practices in order to better understand the Jewish experience within the unique context of Venetian Crete.