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The Jewish Family

The industry blind spot

Your ancestors’ names, kept in Hebrew and Yiddish.

Jewish records live in two name systems — the sacred Hebrew name and the civil one — across alphabets and spellings that shift at every border. Most services flatten all of that into bad English. We built a name engine that keeps it whole.

Keep my family's names wholeAll features
Illustrative — not real data

What the name engine actually resolves.

רבקה בת יוסף

Rivka bat Yosef

  • Sacred ↔ civil name reconciledרבקה בת יוסף

    Hebrew רבקה בת יוסף is linked to the civil records’ “Regina” / “Rivka” — recognized as the same person, not two.

  • Ben / bat patronymics parsedבן / בת

    “bat Yosef” is read as “daughter of Yosef” and wired into the tree as a parent link.

  • Daitch-Mokotoff matchingD-M Soundex

    Rivka, Rifka, Rebeka, Regina collapse to one phonetic key so spelling drift across borders still matches.

  • Hebrew date convertedה׳ אדר תרכ״א

    The Hebrew calendar date is converted to its civil year (~1861) so records line up across systems.

What this means for your family

Names and dates that finally line up

Your name stays your name

Hebrew and Yiddish names render in a proper Hebrew-capable serif, right-to-left — not transliterated into something a grandparent wouldn't recognize.

Spelling drift stops breaking matches

Rivka, Rifka, Rebeka, and Regina are understood as the same name using Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex — the standard built for Ashkenazi surnames.

Patronymics become real links

"ben Yosef" and "bat Yosef" are parsed as father-child relationships and wired into your tree, not left as dead text.

Hebrew dates convert correctly

A matzevah or ketubah dated by the Hebrew calendar is converted to its civil year so it lines up with the rest of the record trail.

Sacred and civil reconciled

The shul record's Hebrew name and the town hall's civil name are recognized as one ancestor — a join other tools simply miss.

The narrative speaks both

Your cited story can carry the Hebrew name alongside the English, so the page reads true to the family.

Under the hood

One ancestor, resolved across both name systems

An illustrative pass through the name engine: a sacred Hebrew name reconciled with its civil form, patronymics parsed, phonetic spelling collapsed, and a Hebrew date converted.

Illustrative — not real data

What the name engine actually resolves.

רבקה בת יוסף

Rivka bat Yosef

  • Sacred ↔ civil name reconciledרבקה בת יוסף

    Hebrew רבקה בת יוסף is linked to the civil records’ “Regina” / “Rivka” — recognized as the same person, not two.

  • Ben / bat patronymics parsedבן / בת

    “bat Yosef” is read as “daughter of Yosef” and wired into the tree as a parent link.

  • Daitch-Mokotoff matchingD-M Soundex

    Rivka, Rifka, Rebeka, Regina collapse to one phonetic key so spelling drift across borders still matches.

  • Hebrew date convertedה׳ אדר תרכ״א

    The Hebrew calendar date is converted to its civil year (~1861) so records line up across systems.

The difference

Who handles Hebrew & Yiddish properly?

ServiceWhat they doWhat we do
Ancestry / MyHeritageStore names as plain Latin text. Hebrew renders inconsistently, and sacred-vs-civil names usually become two unlinked people.Treat the Hebrew name as first-class and reconcile it with the civil name as one person.
23andMeNo genealogical name handling at all — it's a DNA report, not a record-aware name engine.Run a purpose-built engine: D-M Soundex, patronymics, Hebrew dates, sacred↔civil reconciliation.
Generic family-tree appsOffer a free-text name field and leave transliteration, phonetics, and Hebrew dates entirely to you.Do the linguistic work automatically so matches and dates actually align.

The rest of the industry treats Hebrew and Yiddish as an afterthought. For us it’s the starting point.

Start with your free kit

Add a DNA file or a GEDCOM and we begin building your sourced narrative — the first kit is free.

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