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What does Axelrod mean?

What does Axelrod mean?

Posted: 7 May 2002 5:51PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Axelrod
It appears that most Axelrods originated in Eastern Europe or Baltic area. Mine from Molodechno in Belaruss.

Does anyone know where the name originated or what it means? I thought it might relate to the German: Achsel - Rad which might mean "round shoulder" but there don't seem to be many Axelrods from Germany. Could it relate to a place name?

Mike Axelrod

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Possible answers

Mike Axelrod (View posts)
Posted: 22 May 2002 5:02PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Axelrod
I found out the following, so while it's not conclusive, it does answer my own question.


Axelrod, Axelrad

P Originally a first name appearing in the Middle Ages. Variant forms are Axeldar,
Axelrood, Achselrad. Some explain the name as an inverted form of Alexander.
Others see it as the German name Axel with various elaborations. Another
explanation offered is that the name means shoulder or wheel (Achel and Rad in
German) and is a reference to the circular badge that Jews were forced to wear on
their shoulders. While all these theories are interesting, they do not offer a clear
answer (Kaganoff, 1977).


Kaganoff, B. C. (1977). A dictionary of Jewish names and their history.
New York: Schocken Books.

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Possible answers

John Rustin (View posts)
Posted: 30 Sep 2002 5:50PM GMT
Classification: Query
This has got nothing to do with your question but I was cooresponding with a Joseph axelrod and i have lost his e-mail addressyou may know of it .also we may be relaited as
my family was originally from LithuniaIam from London England and am trying to locate lost relatives.

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Rod=Offspring in Russian

akakadabra (View posts)
Posted: 11 Feb 2003 8:01PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Achsel Acksel Achselrod Achselrot Axel Axelson Axelrod Axelrot Axelsen
Dear Michael Axelrod,

your posting on ancestry.com came to my attention. My family is called Achsel, and I also spend many thoughts on where the names Axel/Acksel/Achsel might originate. So I also came across "Axelrod" and "Axelrot".

What puzzled me, was that there are more "Axel-rod"s than "Axel"s.
Usually one would expect more people having the basic form, rather than a deriviated form. I also found, that most "Axelrod"s came from Russia, especially from nowadays Estonia. In an old Russian dictionary, I found
"ROD" to have the meaning of "FAMILY, CLAN, GENERATION, NATIVE OF". That makes sense, Axelrod just could mean "Axel-clan" or "Axel-offspring",
just as Germanic languages would call it Axel-son/ Axel-sen. This would also explain the higher frequency of Axelrods compared to Axels.

Coming to the first part Axel, I can tell you that I did not find a
definitive answer. It is quite sure, that "Axel" has neither Latin, nor Old-Greek, nor Old-Hebrew, nor biblical meanings. The closest would be Old-Hebrew "Acha-el", meaning the God "Acha".

But "Axel" is a quite popular given name in Scandinavia, and maybe our names are a Russian/Baltic version of it. As you mentioned, there is also the German word "Achsel" meaning shoulder. In fact the "Axle" of a car and the "Achsel" as shoulder are of common origin. Originally it was the
same word, meaning something horizontally connecting or carrying - just as an axle does, and the shoulders connect the arms/arm joints. The word "Axel" is quite old, it was already in use in the 9th century. Maybe the name also
remained unchanged.

Another -very far fetched- idea comese from the following: 2000 years ago, there was an ancient Greek tribe called the "Achaean"s. This tribe was forced out ouf Greece and immigrated through Bulgaria to what now is Ukrania/Southern Russia. But that is more that 1500 years ago and linking
the "Achaean"-clan to Axel-rot becomes more than speculative.

Best regards

L. M.-Achsel
Hanover, Germany

PS.: "ACHS" and "ACKS" are pronounced identically to "AX" in German and other languages.

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Rod=Offspring in Russian

Michael Axelrod (View posts)
Posted: 13 Feb 2003 8:32PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Axelrod, Axelrad, Akselrod, Aksel
Dear L. M.-Achsel,

That's very interesting. It sounds like you've done a lot of research.

I'm a bit surprised that "ROD" has a meaning in Russian of family or clan because I can't think of any other Russian names that end in ROD. The -vitch suffix is common, of course. But I am not that knowledgeable on that subject.

Do you know the meaning of the Scandinavian name AXEL? It may relate to the AXEL you described.

What I know is that there are thousands of Axelrods, just in the US (counting variants like Axelrad, Akselrod, etc). That many emigrated from the Ukraine, Belaruss, Poland and Baltic states (Germany?). That it was probably originally a Jewish family name.

There are still many questions, and if others who are curious, like us, contribute what they know, maybe we'll learn the truth.

Best regards,

Michael Axelrod

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Rod=Offspring in Russian

Posted: 20 Apr 2009 11:56PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Axelrod, Smolensky, Mass
Thanks for this interesting thread, although I'm coming in about 6 years too late! FYI My grandmother was Ruth Axelrod Mass (1912-1997). Her siblings were Saul, Victor, Lillian, Harry and Abraham--all born in NYC. Her parents were Morris Axelrod (b 1874 Vilnius, Russia) and Josephine Smolensky Axelrod (b 1878 Warsaw). FYI some of my grandmother's siblings changed their name to "Axelroad" because they thought it sounded more American.

I'd welcome any info about my great-aunts/uncles/grandparents.

Re: What does Axelrod mean? Rod=Offspring in Russian

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 3:50PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Axelrod
Axelrod is an Ashkenazic Jewish name. The following is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews

"Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Hebrew: אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים‎, pronounced [ˌaʃkəˈnazim], singular: [ˌaʃkəˈnazi]; also יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכֲּנָז, Yehudei Ashkenaz, "the Jews of Ashkenaz"), are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany. Thus, Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews are literally "German Jews." Later, Jews from Western and Central Europe came to be called "Ashkenaz" because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany. (See Usage of the name for the term's etymology.) Ashkenaz is also a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10).

Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a basically Germanic language with Hebrew influence (see Jewish language). It had developed in medieval times as the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. The Jewish communities of three cities along the Rhine: Speyer, Worms and Mainz, created the SHUM league (SHUM after the first Hebrew letters of Spira, Warmatia and Magentza). The ShUM-cities are considered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and liturgy."
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