No German origin
This is how Netanyahu’s biggest rival gets his name
October 27, 2026 – 1:40 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Gadi Eisenkot is the most promising challenger in the Israeli elections. His name is puzzling, but there is a simple explanation.
Like many Jewish names, the last name of Benjamin Netanyahu’s most promising challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, sounds German. However, the origin lies in another country, reports the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
The origin of most Jewish names can be traced back to the Habsburg Empire at the turn of the 19th century. Since Jews were previously excluded from guilds and civil rights, they generally did not have a surname. As a result, they were allowed to choose one.
Therefore, many Jews chose names that sounded fashionable and high-class at the time. The Jewish author Linda Rachel Sabiers explained in the “SZ-Magazin”: “Mountain, stone, gold, silver, preferably precious metals, preferably rock structures.” This is how names like Goldmann, Kupferberg and Silberstein came about.
At that time, Jews in Galicia were sometimes given intentionally offensive names by the Habsburg officials. Names like miser, krumnas, ulcer, donkey head, sewer smell and bedbug knicker were the result.
Even if the second part of Eisenkot’s name could also indicate humiliation, it comes from Morocco. After all, Gadi Eisenkot’s parents immigrated from there. The name Azenkot is common there and comes from the Berber languages, where Azakad means deer.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz writes that when the parents immigrated to Israel, they probably had to deal with a European official who mistakenly wrote the name in German. This is how Azenkot apparently became iron droppings.
