Jacobi’s underdog status, as the first-ever Olympic swimmer from Alaska, which has just one Olympic-size pool, means Jewish viewers may have first wondered: Is Lydia Jacobi Jewish?
Jacobi, also spelled Jacobi, is a surname of Ashkenazi Jewish or German origin. Ancestry.com lists the name as “Jewish, English and German”, a variant of Jacobi, and according to a baby names site, “Jacobi most likely derived from the Hebrew personal name ‘Yakov’. There has been a shifted use of a patronymic Jewish surname.’ which was eventually Latinized for Jacob.
Some notable Jacobi in history were Jewish, having fled the Nazis in Germany to become an influential Israeli composer, but many others were not. The swimming phenomenon does not appear to be Jewish.
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Jacobi’s hometown of Seward—where his high school classmates went viral about how they made him happy—has a population of about 2,773 people; The majority of the state’s Jews live in Anchorage.