Katz (surname)


Katz is a common German and Ashkenazi surname.
Germans with the last name Katz may originate in the Rhine River region of Germany, where the Katz Castle is located.
Where it is a Jewish surname, Katz is an abbreviation formed from the initials of the term Kohen Tzedeq or Kohen Tzadok. It has been used since the seventeenth century, or perhaps somewhat earlier, as an epithet of the descendants of Aaron. The collocation is most likely derived from Melchizedek, who is called "the priest of the most high God", or perhaps from Psalm cxxxii. 9: "Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness ". The use of the abbreviated and Germanicized Katz likely coincided with the imposition of German names on Jews in Germany in the 18th or 19th centuries.
If the reading is correct, this abbreviation occurs on a tombstone, dated 1536, in the cemetery of Prague. It is found also on a tombstone of the year 1618 in Frankfurt, in the books of the Soncino family of Prague of the seventeenth century, and in one of the prefaces to Shabbethai ben Meïr ha-Kohen's notes on the Choshen Mishpat.

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