Although most Jews did not have surnames at that time the Russian authorities persuaded them to give themselves family names. The story goes that Yehuda did not know what name to take but that he had befriended a French engineer who was involved in building a railway line through the place where Yehuda lived.

"What's the problem?" asked the engineer, "you are a Jew so call yourself "Juif" ". The name was spelt Shwiff in Russian. The borders were constantly changing and Yehuda's son Mordechai, now finding himself in Poland, was known as Szwif.

Mordechai's son Joshua Hershel Swift was born in Marijampole, Lithuania as was his wife Rivka bat Yisrael Meir. They arrived in England in the 1870s. Joshua had a furniture business, "Swifts" in Walton Road, Liverpool. When Joshua and Rivka emigrated to Palestine, they left the business to their second son George. Joshua died in 1904, and Rivka in 1912; both are buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Their elder son, Baruch Zeev was born in Swislocz, 154 miles from Minsk, in modern Belarus, and became a Rabbi. After living in Israel he returned to Russia, to Yanov, Grodno, and there married Rivka Mozowiecki. Rivka died in Yanov in 1901. Baruch later married Hadassah; they lived in England and later in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem. Baruch died in 1918 and is buried on the Mount of Olives, Hadassah died in Tel Aviv around 1956.

From the first marriage five children survived: Hadassah, Max, Paul, Ethel and Henya; from the second two children, Nisan and Freda.

Ethel was born in Yanov in 1892 and arrived in England aged 18 in 1911 and married Barnard (Barney) Lipkin, a traveling draper from Latvia, in Fountains Road Synagogue in Liverpool on 21 August 1912. They had two children Harold and Rita, and Ethel ran a small gown shop in Liverpool. Barnard died on 3 May 1918. Ethel remarried, to a chazan Solomon Hirsch (Hershel) Morris on 24 December 1922 and Sylvia was born in 1923. Ethel died from double pneumonia in Liverpool on 3 March 1927.