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ArchivesRe: Is Menzies a Jewish name?
in reply to a message by «•^ILY Alys Down^•»
If there is a Jewish family called Menzies, this is a surname they adopted after immigrating to some English speaking country. It is originally a Scottish surname, the Scottish version of the English surname Manners, both derived from an ancestor who lived in the French town Mesnieres in Normandy. I have never heard of this name being associated with the Jewish community before this post.
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The z in Menzies actually derives from the i in Mesnieres. It's a typographical approximation of the letter yogh (variously ȝ or ʒ) which is missing from modern English alphabets. In most cases ȝ/ʒ was replaced by "y" or "gh" (as in "sigh"), but in personal or place names it was sometimes replaced with z or s, and in some cases an original "i" was replaced by z/s make it seem more like a native English/Scots name/word that had a earlier ȝ/ʒ when it never did.
This message was edited 8/18/2021, 8:13 AM
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