Re: Shapiro vs Shapira

[lara@technion.ac.il lara@technion.ac.il]

X-No-archive: yes
Shapiro versus Shapira is not connected to Russian spelling. Shapira is
related to Hebrew transliteration. In Hebrew this surname is pronounced
Shapira. So in most vital records from Belarus in Russian part is also
written Shapira. But it seems that in Ashkenazi Hebrew A became O as in
many other surnames and names. For example, Asher-Osher, Baruch-Boruch etc.
My Belarus Shapira ancestors were written mostly as Shapira in vital records
and other documents.
Just later, mainly in 20th century, the surname was written Shapiro for all
my family in Russia, but it stayed Shapira among those relatives that came
to Palestine and lived in Israel.
In Russian O becomes A in syllables which are not stressed, but never vice versa.

Lara Tsinman (Shapira)
Israel

Martha Forsyth <thefo...@verizon.net> wrote:
This is simply a normal phonetic change in Russian - the vowel "o" is
indistinguishable from "a" when it is not accented (the accented vowel in
the name is the "i", and all the others are unaccented). So when a person
comes from those countries, that's one of the "changes" that happens to
their names - and it's one of the reasons genealogists say, "Spelling
doesn't count." Similarly, the sound "sh" can be written in many ways when
it arrives in different countries.

David Goldman wrote:
> I am wondering about the emergence of the two different spellings of
> this name in the same community or district in the Russian Empire (i.e.Ukraine).
> My own relatives are known as Shapiro, yet it seems that in the same
> area there were other families presumably unrelated to us known as Shapira.
> Were the two names simply interchangeable because in Yiddish characters they are
> spelled the same, or did it reflect different origins? I seem to remember the
> idea that Shapira was more common in Poland and Shapiro more common in Lithuania.
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