Origin of the name Perlmuter

The surname Perlmuter belongs to the group of the Jewish surnames, which were derived from names of professions or occupations. In the majority of the cases the Jewish, so-called, “professional” surnames are simply the names of the profession. This is regardless of the language, from which the corresponding word, which forms the surname, is taken. Often such surnames are created on the basis of Hebrew / Yiddish / Ladino languages or the languages of the surrounding population (German, Arabic, or Slavic languages).

The surname Perlmuter is based on the German word “perlmutter” which means “mother of pearls”, also known as "nacre". Mother-of-pearls is
an inner layer of a seashell or a shell of a freshwater pearl mussel. Pearls
and mother-of-pearls are composed of essentially the same material.

In the 19th century, mother-of-pearls was used as a material for preparing of buttons, keys for musical tools and as the basis of the jewelry articles.

Probably, the person who got the surname Perlmuter had occupation which was production of jewelry articles and different accessories made of pearls and the mother-of-pearls.

The surname Perlmuter is a Galician surname and it could be also an “artificial” Jewish surname. That is such a beautiful surname could be chosen by the first bearer of the name because of its attractive meaning.

This way or another, the representatives of this surname always gravitated towards precious stones. For example the name of a well-known Israeli diamonds quality inspector is Iosef Perlmuter.

Thus, the surname Perlmuter comes from Galicia, which back then belonged to the Austrian empire. From Galicia the owners of this surname migrated to Poland (Lodz, Chestohowa, Plonsk) and also to Ukraine (Dubna, Kovel, Kremenets, Lutsk, Vinnitsa), because of different reasons.

At the beginning of the 20th century a lot of the Polish family branch members immigrated to the US. Significant amount of Perlmuters lost their lives during the times of the Holocaust. Information on these people may be found in the records of the Lodz Ghetto inmates, in the records of different concentration camps and among the testimonials in the Yad Vashem database.