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Question:

Is Goodman really a jewish name ?


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Goodman

English: status name from Middle English gode ??good?? + man ??man??, in part from use as a term for the master of a household. In Scotland the term denoted a landowner who held his land not directly from the crown but from a feudal vassal of the king.

English: from the Middle English personal name Godeman, Old English Godmann, composed of the elements god ??good?? or god ??god?? + mann ??man??.

English: from the Old English personal name Gu㰭und, composed of the elements gu㰠??battle?? + mund ??protection?? , or the Old Norse cognate Gu㰭undr.

Americanized form of Jewish Gutman or German Gutmann.

and

Gutman
Jewish (Ashkenazic): ornamental name or nickname from German, Yiddish gut ??good?? + man(n) ??man??; it was also used as a male personal name, from which the surname may be derived in some cases.

Americanized spelling of German Gut(h)mann (see Guthman).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

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You can also look at the family. If there are more than the normal amount per capita of doctors, lawyers, accountants or Nobel prizes among your family tree, the Goodmans you know might be Jewish.

Jewish people were letting their women go to college long before Christians were, in general. Gertrude Elion, for instance, probably wouldn't have discovered the drug that cures leukemia if she had been born into a middle-class Christian home in 1918. She was born into a Jewish home in 1918 and won her Nobel Prize in 1988.

If some of those Goodmans were in army units that faced twice their number (or four times) and triumphed, in 1967 or 1974, they might be Jewish too. Not all Jews take up scholarly trades.