Kushnir (Ukrainian: Кушнір, Belarusian: Кушнір, Russian: Кушни́р, Ку́шнир, Hebrew: קושניר) is a Ukrainian surname also used by Ashkenazi Jews. In Ukrainian the surname means "furrier", as does the Ashkenazi Jewish name.
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Etymology
The root of the name is the old Slavic word for fur, кърьзно, which can be transliterated as "kyrizno" or "kurizno" ("ъ" is the Slavic letter designating an ultra-short vowel, as for instance the "y" in "Katyusha"). The Polish word for furrier is Kuśnierz, also used as a surname, with similar words and names found in Serbian and Croatian.
Through the Slavic fur merchants, the word was also adopted into Germanic languages and evolved for instance into the modern German and Swedish words for furrier, Kürschner and körsnär respectively. Yiddish is a language lexically based to a large degree on German, and therefore a Yiddish-speaking Jew living in the Ukraine or Poland could relate to the local word for furrier both through the local Slavic language, as through his mother tongue.
Variations
There are many variations of the Ukrainian name Kushnir from all over Central Europe. In the west the name starts in Germany as Kuschner and variations of it run through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary to the Ukraine in the east and others. The derivatives may include Kushnirenko, Kushnirchuk, Kushnirovych, Kushnirak, Kushnirov, Kushnariv, Kushnarev, Kushner, Cushner, Kusznir , "Kusnir" and others.