Voices from the past: Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) nicknames among the Israeli-sephardic jews from salonika

In this chapter, the authors focus on an additional venue through which examination of linkages is possible and fecund: the composition of Ladino speakers’ names. They draw on names of endearment and nicknames, which became very widespread among Ladino speakers. The authors look at a relatively small group of names and nicknames that circulated among Ladino speakers in Salonika, and whose traditional application continues in contexts which have followed the city’s demise in the Holocaust as a significant center of Sephardic life, culture, and commerce. The last decades of the twentieth century will undoubtedly be considered among the most fruitful in terms of research on the culture of Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews. Identifying and understanding the dynamics of Salonikan Sephardic attachment to Spanish culture contributes uniquely to one’s examination and interpretation of the nicknames that have circulated among the Greek city’s Ladino speakers. In terms of Judeo-Spanish culture, one can identify many interesting convergences through an onomastic lens.