The Origins of Stalin’s Last Name: Djugashvili and the Ossetian Connection
Recently I was treated to yet another – in my view pretty desperate – attempt to claim that Joseph Stalin’s last name Djugashvili (or Dzhugashvili/Jughashvili) means ‘Son of [a] Jew’ but this time the claim has changed the language from Old Georgian or Georgian to Ossetic. (1)
Superficially this looks stronger than the silly ‘Georgian’ argument because while the Georgian words for jew are ‘Ebraeli’ as well as ‘Uriya’ so are nothing like ‘Djugha’, ‘Dzhuga’ or ‘Jugha’ although it hasn’t stopped all sorts of attempts to claim there is such a word; although naturally no evidence of this has ever actually been provided other than ‘I say so’.
The reason for the Ossetian connection being a better argument than the Georgian is that Stalin’s father Bessarion (or Vissarion) Djugashvili had possible – but not proven mind you - Ossetian ancestry with Bessarion’s father Zaza Djugashvili thought to have possibly come from the village of Geri in modern South Ossetia, but this is merely educated conjecture not an evidenced backed statement. (2)
Now what about the Ossetian words for jew?
They are ‘dzuttag’ and ‘izrailag’.
Now immediately the term for jew in Ossetic ‘dzuttag’ stands out as a lot closer to like ‘Djugha’, ‘Dzhuga’ and ‘Jugha’ as it shares the ‘Dz’ and the ‘u’ with ‘Dzhuga’ but here proponents of this theory get caught out because they assume that the ‘Dzhu’ would pronounce ‘Dj-u’ in Ossetic as it does in Georgian, but in fact that the ‘Dz’ in Ossetic is pronounced as ‘zz’ (like in ‘pizza’) (3) meaning that it doesn’t sound as ‘Dj-u’ as they want it so sound.
Now as to the similarity ‘dzuttag’ looks plausible as a possible etymological origin of ‘Dzhuga’ until we bother to check what Stalin’s biographers - such as Montefiore - (4) think ‘Dzhuga’ comes from in Ossetic which is ‘dzug’ which is a lot closer to ‘Dzhuga’ than ‘dzuttag’.
What does ‘dzug’ mean in Ossetic?
Herd (or possibly flock).
So ‘Son of the Herd’.
Clearly then if we use ‘dzug’ as an etymological origin for ‘Dzhuga’ then it shares the ‘Dzug’ but where does the ‘h’ come from? Well, the ‘ug’ is pronounced ‘ch’ in Ossetic leading to the probable introduction of an ‘h’ into the ‘Dzhuga’ in ‘Dzhugashvili’.
So, no Dzhugashvili doesn’t mean ‘Son of [a] Jew]’ in Ossetian; it actually means something like ‘Son of [the] Herd’.
References
(1) See my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-joseph-stalin-jewish and https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-origins-of-stalins-last-name
(2) Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2007, 'Young Stalin', 1st Edition, Phoenix: London, p. 19; Ronald Grigor Suny, 2020, ‘Stalin: Passage to Revolution’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 17-18
(3) https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Ossetian_phrasebook
(4) Montefiore, Op. Cit., p. 19
I knew it! Village Jew !
"The Jewish Stalin - a review from 1944 May 10, 1944 Sündermann on the relations between Stalin and the Jews Berlin, May 10 (German Telegraph Office) In his series of articles entitled "Stalin and the Jews", Sündermann, the deputy press chief of the Reich government, deals with Stalin's way of thinking and origin and proves that Stalin is of Jewish origin. The statement, writes Sündermann, that Stalin is Georgian is true only of Stalin's father. Stalin's mother was an Ossetian woman, therefore of Iranian origin, but there are reports that Stalin's mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish leather merchant from the Kuta Mountains. A report by a Menshevik who spent several months in Siberian captivity with Stalin shows that Stalin had a distinctly Jewish character and spoke Russian with a slight Semitic accent, so the guards mistook him for a Jew, mocked him, and cursed him." "According to Nazi counter-linguists, his surname, Dzhugashvili, can be translated as "son of a Jew." However, the correct translation of the surname is "son of Yuga," a common Georgian surname. It comes from the Ossetian word Juha (sheep)."
I'm sorry you took my comment so offensively, but I thought about this information too. Yes, after all, a "report" from an imperial propagandist is not a reliable source, but I don't think anyone has a reliable source, since they tried to erase all traces.
However, regardless of whether Stalin was Jewish or not, as a Hungarian I am grateful to him for preventing Churchill's plan to destroy Hungary. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not accept and sign the Trianon Dictate, which annexed 2/3 of our country's territory from us. Together with our people.