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Our family name Halperin (variations: Halpern, Halprin, Galperin, Galprin, Heilpern, Halper, Helpern, Heilbron, Heilbronn, Heilbronner, Heilbrun, Heilprun, Alpron, Alpern, Galpern, Halprin, and Halperine, as a France variant) is one of the most widespread Jewish names. It is derived from the name of the city of Heilbronn in Wurttemburg, Germany, where it was first assumed about four hundred fifty years ago.
It seems that Rabbi Eliezer Lipman Ashkenazi-Halperin, A.B.D. Tiktin, born in 1575, Son of Rabbi Moshe Heilprin (Maharsha father-in-law) and Eidel Ashkenazi-Halpern, was among the first to spell his family name in Yiddish as האלפּערין. Tiktin is Yiddish spelling of the name of the City of Tykocin in the Podlasie Province in Central Poland, capital of Poland since 1596, with a Jewish population of 375,000 in 1939, representing 29 percent of the total city population. So, Halperin is a Polish spelling of this family name.
Refs.: https://www.geni.com/surnames/HalperIn / A dictionary of Jewish names and their history.-- by B.C. Kaganoff (1977), New York: Schocken Books. / https://www.geni.com/surnames/Halpern / Rabbi Eliezer Lipman Ashkenazi-Halperin, A.B.D. Tiktin / Tykocin-- by Anna Michałowska-Mycielska, Translated from Polish by Anna Grojec-- https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1386
The paternal progenetor I have firm evidence of is my grand-grand-grandfather Mordcha-Meir ben David Halperin, who lived in the first half of the XIX century in Staryi Chortoryisk (Старый Чарторыйськ - in Russian, Старий Чарторийськ - in Ukrainian, Chartorisk - in Yiddish), Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire. The name Mordcha is a short form of the Jewish name Mordechai. Staryi Chortoryisk stands on the shores of Styr River, and Mordcha-Meir Halperin was a timber-rafting trader on Styr River.
After the disintegration of the Galicia–Volhynia circa 1340, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania divided the region, Poland taking western Volhynia and Lithuania taking eastern Volhynia (1352–1366). During this period many Poles and Jews settled in the area.
The official language of the Kingdom of Poland was Polish using the Latin-type alphabet and the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was Belarusian using the Cyrillic-type alphabet.
In 1569 the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united into one state of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. This state included territories of today's Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania.-- Ref.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth.
The official languages in the Commonwealth were both Polish and Belarusian.
At the end of the XVIII century, after a series of three partitions among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire, which started in 1772, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist in 1795.-- Ref.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Partition_of_Poland
In 1795, the Russian Empire annexed a larger part of Volhynia, including Staryi Chortoryisk, from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, changing the official language in Volhynia to Russian.
Since that time, Volhynia became a part of the Pale of Settlement, a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915), in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden.
In 1897, the population of the Volhynian Governorate amounted to 2,989,482 people. It consisted of 73.7 percent East Slavs (predominantly Ukrainians), 13.2 percent--400,000 Jews, 6.2 percent Poles, and 5.7 percent Germans.
From 1921 to 1939 Volhynia was a part of Poland, from 1939 to 1991, Volyn was a part of Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since 1991 Volyn has been a part of independent Ukraine.
So, Volhynian Jews had to be polyglots. They talked to each other in Yiddish (mame-loshn, lit. "mother tongue"), they prayed in synagogues in Hebrew and Aramaic (loshn koydesh, "holy tongue"), they communicated with the local Ukrainian majority - in Ukrainian, and to deal with governmental officials they had to speak Polish, Belarussian, and Russian.
On Dec 9, 1804, Emperor Alexander I approved the “Regulation on Jews” requiring every Jew to acquire a surname written in his/her governmental ID. -- Ref.: https://constitutions.ru/?p=18862
"30. No Jew can be tolerated anywhere in Russia unless he is registered in one of these civil statuses. Jews who cannot show their legally proscribed registration document will be treated as vagabonds, according to the full severity of the law.
"31. In this census, every Jew must have or accept his known hereditary surname, or nickname, which must then be preserved in all acts and records without any change, with the addition of the name given either according to their faith or at birth; this measure is necessary for the better arrangement of their civil status, for the more convenient preservation of their property rights and adjudication of litigations between them."
"31. In this census, every Jew must have or accept his known hereditary surname, or nickname, which must then be preserved in all acts and records without any change, with the addition of the name given either according to their faith or at birth; this measure is necessary for the better arrangement of their civil status, for the more convenient preservation of their property rights and adjudication of litigations between them."
Thus, to register his Russian ID, my grand-grand-grandfather had to transliterate his family name האלפּערין using the Russian alphabet, which, unlike the Ukrainian and Polish alphabets, does not have a letter representing the deafened g sound [h].
All the above being said, our family name Galperin is the English transliteration of the Russian transliteration of Yiddish family name האלפּערין, while the English transliteration of the original Yiddish family name האלפּערין is Halperin.
There are several notable Halperins honored with their entries included in the 12-volume "The Jewish Encyclopedia" publ. by Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York & London in 1901, re-published in 2001 as Scholar PDF by Varda Books, Skokie, IL ISBN 1-59045-443-X, Prepared as an e-book by Varda Graphics, Inc. The relevant extracts from this encyclopedia (Vol. 6, pp. 320-326) and (Vol. 6, p. 179)