Jewish surnames are family names used by Jews and those of Jewish origin. Jewish surnames are thought to be of comparatively recent origin; the first known Jewish family names date to the Middle Ages, in the 10th and 11th centuries CE. Jews have some of the largest varieties of surnames among any ethnic group, owing to the geographically diverse Jewish diaspora, as well as cultural assimilation and the recent trend toward Hebraization of surnames. Some traditional surnames relate to Jewish history or roles within the religion, such as Cohen ("priest"), Levi, Shulman ("synagogue-man"), Sofer ("scribe"), or Kantor ("cantor"), while many others relate to a secular occupation or place names. The majority of Jewish surnames used today developed in the past three hundred years. History Historically, Jews 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 the 18th and 19th centuries, where the adoption of German surnames was imposed in exchange for Jewish emancipation. European nations gradually undertook legal endeavors with the aim of enforcing permanent surnames in the Jewish populations. Part of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 contained a provision mandating fixed legal surnames for Sephardic Jews, but it was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that the rest of Europe followed suit. The Kingdom of Prussia began sequentially requiring Jews in its eastern provinces to adopt surnames in the 1790s, an edict affirmed by Napoleon Bonaparte following his invasion of Prussia in 1812. Surnames were derived from a variety of sources, such as the personal names of ancestors, place names, and occupations. In the 18th century, a custom developed amongst the Eastern European Jews of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires where surnames began being passed from mother to son as opposed from father to son, but the trend seems to have died out by the early 20th century. An exception was members of the Cohanim (priestly caste) and Levites (descendants of Levi) who performed certain religious duties, who had always appended the surnames Cohen and Levi respectively (modern spelling in