Mendelssohn (surname)

The Yiddish-language surname מענדעלסאן is transliterated to English as Mendelssohn, Mendelsson, Mandelson (surname), or Mendelson. It is a common Polish/German Jewish surname. The variant spellings are used interchangeably, often even within a single family.

The name means son of Mendel ("Mendel's son"), or son of Menachem, as Mendel is a Yiddish diminutive of the Hebrew given name Menahem. Menachem itself means "consoling" or "one who consoles."

People

Mendelssohn family
- Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), philosopher, a significant figure in the Age of Enlightenment in Germany, and his descendants:
- Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1776–1835), German Jewish banker, son of Moses, father of Fanny and Felix
- Dorothea Mendelssohn (1763–1839), daughter of Moses, married (i) Simon Veit, (ii) Friedrich von Schlegel
- Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847), composer and pianist, daughter of Abraham
- Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), noted early Romantic composer, son of Abraham
- Joseph Mendelssohn (1770–1848), German Jewish banker, son of Moses, founder of Mendelssohn & Co.
- Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1841–1880), chemist, son of Felix
- Rebecka Mendelssohn (1811–1858), daughter of Abraham, married Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859), mathematician
- Arnold Mendelssohn (1855–1933), son of Nathan, German composer and music teacher
Anna Mendelssohn (1948–2009), British political activist and poet
Ben Mendelsohn (born 1969), Australian actor and musician
Brandon Mendelson, American author of the book Social Media Is Bullshit
Carol Mendelsohn (born 1951), American TV writer
Curtis Lester Mendelson, who first described the pneumonia called Mendelson's syndrome
Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960), American author and classics scholar
Elliott Mendelson, an American logician, famous for Mendelson axiom schemata for Propositional Logic
Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953), Prussian architect
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (1911–1952), British band leader
George Mendelssohn, founder of Vox Records in 1945
Heinrich Mendelssohn (1881–1959), German building tycoon
Horst Mendelsohn (1930-2013), German actor
Jonathan Mendelsohn, Baron Mendelsohn (born 1966), British lobbyist and Labour political organiser
Kurt Mendelssohn (1906–1980), German-born British medical physicist
Matthew Mendelsohn (birthdate unknown), Canadian civil servant
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), philosopher, a significant figure in the Age of Enlightenment in Germany, and his descendants:
Robert S. Mendelsohn (1926–1988), pediatrician and critic of medical paternalism, inveighing against pediatric practice and obstetric orthodoxy
Nathan Mendelsohn (1917–2006), Canadian mathematician
Nicola Mendelsohn (born 1971), British advertising executive
Paul Mendelson, scriptwriter for television, film and radio

Companies

Mendelssohn & Co., a private German bank

Musical societies

Mendelssohn Club (1874), a Philadelphia choral society
Mendelssohn Glee Club (1866), a New York City choral society
Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center (1884), a Rockford, IL music organization.