HONIGMAN Origin of surname
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a patronymic, derived from a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin.
Honigman, literally "honey man", is a variant of Henoch, the German form of the biblical Enoch, the son of Cain (Genesis 4.17) and also the son of Jared (Genesis 5.18-24). Family names based on the biblical Enoch include Henochs, documented in the 16th century in Jerusalem, Hennig recorded in Leipzig, Germany, in the 17th century, and Hoenig, found in Austria in the 18th century, as well as Henochsberg, Henig, Henikstein, Hoenigswald, Hoenigsberg, Hoenigsmann and Hoenich. Another line of development leads from Hoenig to Honig (the German for "honey"), Honigman and Honikman. Some names in this group might also be linked to the small German towns of Honig and Hoenig, or to Hennigsdorf near Berlin in Brandenburg, eastern Germany.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Honigman include the Silesian-born German jurist David Honigman (1821-1885), the 20th century American musician, Hinda I. Honigman and the 20th century Russian-born American attorney, Jason L. Honigman.
Emil Fagure
(Personality)Emil D. Fagure (born Samuel Honigman) (1873-1948), writer, journalist, theatre and music critic, and politician, born in Iasi, Romania. He attended the high school in Iasi and in parallel received a musical education and then he graduated from the School of Law of the University of Bucharest. He started a journalistic career as editor at various periodicals, including Munca (“Labor”) and Lumea noua (“New World”). As of 1895 and during the next twenty-six years he worked for Adevarul (“Truth”), the main left-wing newspaper in Romania at the end of the 19th century, eventually becoming its editor-in-chief as well as editor-in-chief of the newspaper’s literary supplement. He stayed in Paris for one year in 1918-1919 where he was a member of the editorial board of La Roumanie weekly, a periodical that promoted closer ties between Romania and France.
In 1921 he joined the leadership of the Lupta (“Struggle”) newspaper and served as one of its directors until 1937. A supporter of the National Peasants’ Party, Fagure was elected to the lower house of the Romanian parliament from 1929 to 1932, and served as senator in the Romanian parliament from 1932 to 1933.
During his journalistic career he contributed to numerous periodicals. In his political articles he supported Romania’s alliance with the Entente powers in WW1 and opposed the pro-German and pro-Nazi policy of the extreme right wing Romanian parties during the 1930s. He also criticized the failures of the social policy of various Romanian governments. Because of the ascendency of the anti-Semitic and Fascist parties in Romania, he left the country in 1938. Fagure took refuge in France, but during the German occupation of the country in WW2 he was discovered by the Nazis and interned in the Drancy camp near Paris, and his son was murdered at Auschwitz Nazi death camp. He returned to Romania in 1946, trying to resume the publication of the newspaper Lupta. Fagure committed suicide in March 1948, a few months after Romania became a Communist country.
Fagure is remembered particularly for his articles of literary and theatre criticism. In the years between the two world wars he was one of the most influential theatre and music critics in Romania. He also wrote the texts of numerous vaudeville shows for Bucharest theatres and translated into Romanian plays by foreign authors.