In a message dated 5/21/2008 10:51:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jill.whitehead@blueyonder.co.uk writes: "In regard to the Hebrew name for Harris I have several ancestors called Hirsch who subsequently became Harris. Not sure if this name is Hebrew or Yiddish?" Hirsch is Yiddish and German. It means a "stag"--a male deer. The female form is Hinda--a "doe." At a certain point in time in German lands, Jews were forbidden by law to give their children Hebrew names. Some of them got around this rule by assigning names based on Biblical metaphors. One passage in the Old Testament compares a person named Naftali to a deer--"He was as swift as a deer," or something like that. So, instead of giving the child the Hebrew name Naftali, he was given the name "Hirsch" which was a deer in German and Yiddish, and, to the German ear, didn't sound like a Jewish name. There are a lot of animal names among Ashkenazi Jews for this reason. Brian Neil Burg Fullerton, CA, USA P.S. Herschel is a diminutive form. **************Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with Tyler Florence" on AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)