Help with translation, please

[E Wayles Browne]

Dear Jules,
Part of the story is clear from Boris Unbegaun's Russian Surnames (Oxford
1972). Talking about surnames of Jewish origin, he notes that a lot of
them are occupation names, frequently ending in -nik: Bortnik
'bee-keeper'...Cukernik 'confectioner'...Kilimnik 'carpet-trader'... and
(p. 346) "Shkol'nik, Skol'nik, which is a translation of Yiddish Shulman.
The word shul in Yiddish means both 'school' and 'temple' (synagogue), and
Shulman derives from the latter. The Russian translation refers wrongly to
the other meaning of shul."
Unbegaun's book contains so much information about Russian and other
languages and is so nicely written that one can just sit down with it and
read it for enjoyment.
Wayles
-- 
Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu

> I am translating 19th C. Jewish birth registrations from the Pale of
> Settlement.
>   I find in a document I am working on the term "shkol'nik" used for adult
> witnesses
> aged 58 and 67.  I suspect that these witnesses are employees of the
> synagogue (shul), and the
> term shkol'nik was the Russian translation (if anyone actually used it)
> for
> a shamus (beadle).
> Can anyone confirm this or correct it?  Modern dictionaries do not even
> give shkola as a Russian rendering
> of shul, but it would be parallel with German and Italian (scuola), so I
> suppose it could have been a hyper-learned
> usage...
> Jules Levin
>
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