Surname
Jews have historically used Hebrew patronymic names. In the Jewish patronymic system the first name is followed by either ben- or bat- ("son of" and "daughter of", respectively), and then the father's name. (Bar-, "son of" in Aramaic, is also seen). Permanent family surnames exist today but only gained popularity among Sephardic Jews in Iberia and elsewhere as early as the 10th or 11th century and did not spread widely to the Ashkenazic Jews of Germany or Eastern Europe until much later. Thus, while many European and North American Jews now use European and German surnames for everyday life, the patronymic form is still used in Jewish religious and cultural life, and is common in Israel. It is used in synagogue and in documents in Jewish law such as the ketubah (marriage contract). Many Sephardic Jews used the Arabic ibn instead of bat or ben when it was the norm. The Spanish family Ibn Ezra is one example.
Many immigrants to modern Israel change their names back to Hebrew names, to erase remnants of galuti (exiled) life still surviving in family names from other languages. This is especially common among Ashkenazic Jews, because most of their European names were taken later and some were imposed by the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires (explaining why many Ashkenazi Jews have German or European-sounding names).
A popular form to create a new family name using Jewish patronymics sometimes related to poetic Zionist themes, such as ben Ami ("son of my people"), or ben Artzi ("son of my country"), and sometimes related to the Israeli landscape, such as bar Ilan ("son of the trees", also similar phonetically to the bearer's original family name Berlin). Others have created Hebrew names based on phonetic similarity with their original family name: Golda Meyersohn became Golda Meir. Another famous person who used a false patronymic was the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, whose original family name was Grün but adopted the name "Ben-Gurion" ("son of the lion cub"), not "Ben-Avigdor" (his father's name).
Read more about this topic: Jewish Name