We can pinpoint the origins of the last name Kohan to the Old Testament, specifically Numbers 17: 8-9, in the fifth book of the Torah. As Bible Gateway quotes: “The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds. Then Moses brought out all the staffs from the Lord’s presence to all the Israelites. They looked at them, and each of the leaders took his own staff.”

The budding of almonds on Aaron’s staff — sometimes called the “founding rod” — was considered a miraculous event because almonds don’t typically sprout overnight (it takes five to 12 years, via Blue Diamond). Aaron had acted as Moses’ speaker when communicating with the Egyptian pharaoh, and the tale recounted in Numbers illustrates how Aaron’s tribe and descendants were blessed, more or less, to act in a priestly capacity for the rest of the Jewish people.

That moment produced Judaism’s three-way, still-existent lineage, as the Jewish Virtual Library explains: Kohanim (those who trace their lineage directly back to Aaron himself), Leviim (those of Judaism’s hereditary priestly class and tribe, also called Levis and Levites), and Yisraelim (all others of Jewish descent or those who convert to Judaism, from where we get the names Israel and Israelite). To this day, some Jewish communities keep painstaking records of lines supposedly stretching back to Aaron to demonstrate the authenticity of their rabbis.

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