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Ashkenazi, and variants of this surname, signify that a distant paternal ancestor of the bearer belonged to the Ashkenazi subdivision of the Jewish people.

The Ashkenazi Jews are a Jewish ethnic subdivision who lived in Northern and Eastern Europe. They named themselves 'Ashkenazi' when they first settled the Rhine, in Germany, in the 8th century AD. This was because it was thought 'Ashkenaz,' a place named in the Old Testament, referred to Germany, though modern scholarship suggests this is extremely unlikely.

The vast majority of bearers of the Ashkenazi surname are not Ashkenazi themselves. Rather, they pertain to other Jewish groups, and their ancestor, who would have left an Ashkenazi community to join a different one, retained 'Ashkenazi' as a surname because it was noteworthy that he was from a distinct background to the rest of his adopted community. It is most common amongst Syrian and Bukharan Jews.

The surname Ashkenazi is of Hebrew origin, and ultimately topographical in nature.