The Hebraization of surnames (also Hebraicization; Hebrew: עברות Ivrut) is the act of amending one's Jewish surname, so that it is tied to the Hebrew language, which was natively spoken by Jews and Samaritans until it died out of everyday use by around 200 CE. For many Jews of diaspora and Palestinian origin, immigration to the land of Israel and taking up a Hebrew surname has long been conceptualized as a way to erase remnants of their diaspora oppression, particularly since the inception of Zionism in the 19th century. This notion, which was part of what drove the revival of the Hebrew language, was further consolidated after the founding of Israel in 1948.
Hebraizing surnames has been an especially common practice among Ashkenazi Jews; many Ashkenazi families had acquired permanent surnames (rather than patronyms) only when surnames were forced upon them by Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire following an official decree on 12 November 1787. Sephardic Jews often had hereditary family names (e.g., Cordovero, Abrabanel, Shaltiel, de Leon, Alcalai, Toledano, Lopez) since well before the Spanish expulsion of Jews near the end of the Reconquista, which had begun after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century.
