Help with translation, please

[Jules Levin]

At 06:25 PM 9/5/2005, colleagues wrote:
>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."
...
Dal' includes the meaning "synagogue" in his entry for _shkola_, but also 
says that "byvshikh kantonistov zvali neredko shkol'nikami."
There's similar information on the website <mirimen.co>, which states (in 
Russian and in the following transliteration): "SHkol'nikami chasto zvali 
byvshix kantonistov, to est' synovej soldat i voennyx poseljan, objazannyx 
v kachestve krepostnyx obuchat'sja v osoboj voennoj shkole. ... In the 
Jewish context _kantonistn_ were young Jewish boys forced into tsarist 
military service during the reign of Nicholas I. They were sent to the 
kantonist schools (i.e., the schools for orphans and the sons of soldiers) 
until they were old enough to serve.
...   But then, in support of Jules' hypothesis that _shkol'nik_ = 
_shames_, the site <www.ancestry.com> suggests that "Shulman" (Unbegaun's 
etymon for _Shkol'nik_) is a variant of "Schulman," which is a variat of 
"Schuler," one of the meanings of which is "occupational name for a 
Talmudic scholar or the sexton of a synagogue, from an agent derivative of 
Yiddish shul 'synagogue'."
...I found some information from Chelm and Zgierz
(both Poland, at least at one time) indicating a
Shkolnik or Szkolnik was some kind of high office in
the kehilla, comparable either to a Director or a
Sexton.

Thanks to all.  I am going with sexton.  But I wonder about shul meaning 
school.  Perhaps it meant a gentile school?  I assume that
the word for school in the shtetl was cheder, shul only meaning synagogue.
Jules Levin

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