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[Facts] Would Pascal be considered an English equivalent?
In doing some genealogical research, I found the name "Ycheskil" given as the father's name for a girl on her 1911 United States marriage license. It was the sole name given for the father, leaving one to assume the intent was to imply her surname and his surname were the same - though this would in further research not be the case. The family immigrated from Romania in 1902 and their ethnicity on the passenger manifest was given as Hebrew. To give a time-frame - knowing names do evolve with time - the girl was born about 1891 in Romania. The family surname was given as "Marcus". Subsequent research revealed the girl was not biologically the daughter of the father of the family of which she was a part, but was a step-daughter. From internet searches, "Ycheskil" looks as though it may be a variant of "YECHEZKEL" which generally has a one-to-one correlation to the English "Ezekiel". However, not being knowledgeable of Hebrew, Yiddish, or Romanian names, I could be totally incorrect. The step-father's name was Joseph Marcus. The biological father's name, per a transcription of the girl's United States death certificate, was Pascal Cohen. And as other children in the Marcus household were in some sources listed with the surname of "Marcus" and in others with the surname "Cohen", it is likely the girl was not Joseph's biological daughter but his step-daughter.With these facts, I am trying to understand how or if "Ycheskil" has any association to the name "Pascal". Of course, "Ycheskil" may be incorrectly spelt on the marriage license. If a variant of misspelling of "YECHEZKEL", the "one-to-one, direct" English equivalent of "Ezekiel", but I also know sometimes the English name adopted is not such and is sometimes based on a relative near-sounding equivalent to the full or portion of the Hebrew name. I tried finding what Hebrew or Yiddish names generally align with Pascal with no success. I was trying that to see if a near-spelling of such a name might exist to "Ycheskil" or not. Of course, sometimes the English equivalent has zero correspondence to the Hebrew name. Note, the girl's biological father did not immigrate to the United States, her mother did with her subsequent husband who was the girl's step-father. So the Anglicization of her biological father's name would be purely because it was a United States document vs anything elen.This leaves me perplexed as to how "Ycheskil" and "Pascal" could be equivalents. Any ideas?Jackie Clinton
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Hi Jackie,"Ycheskil" is almost certainly a phonetic transcription of Yechezkel or Yekhatskel (which is the Yiddish form of the name). From my own experience looking at passenger manifests, this particular name gave the immigration officers problems and spelling seems to be all over the place. The Yekhatskel in my family had his name transcribed as Chatze.I don't think that Pascal is an equivalent of any sort with Yechezkel. What I think may be going on here is that his name is Yekhatskel/Yechezkel OR Khatskel, which is a more common Yiddish form seen in European records. Khatskel and Yekhatskel have a similar sounding ending to Pascal and your ancestor may have decided to pick a name that sounded similar to the Yiddish name.
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I can see this being purely a transcription error — someone filling in the name Pascal, taking it from a handwritten Yechezkel and simply misreading the Y as a P etc. This happens all the time when old handwritten records are transcribed.

This message was edited 6/7/2019, 6:59 AM

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