Names
Mon., June 16, 12:16 PM
Isn’t it amazing how someone else’s post can jump start us into one of our own. When The Purple Chai asked for people to suggest a new name for her, it reminded me of two different stories about names.
Among northern European Jews it is the custom to give a new baby the same Hebrew name as someone who has passed on. It is a custom, not a law (the southern European Jews have their own set of customs), but there are numerous superstitions surrounding it. “It’s to fool the Angel of Death.” “If you name your baby after someone living, one of them will die.” In spite of all that, it’s not unusual to find that cousins are named after the same grandparent.
I don’t care much for superstition, but I do like the custom, because it’s a way of remembering someone you loved. And sometimes, if you don’t have a name in mind, you can make someone else happy by using a name. For example, Son is named for one of Husband’s uncles; I never met the man, but I know that his widow appreciated the name.
In America, we then choose an English name, and the fashions for such names come and go. People used to choose a name that began with the same letter. Isaac became Isadore in the next generation, followed by Irving or Irwin, and then Evan (this was modern), and then maybe back to Isaac. There’s no logic in it. In the last generation or so, there has been a movement to translating the name and finding an English name that means the same thing. “Hannah,” for example, translates to Grace. “Ari” means lion, and Leo or Leonard is an appropriate translation.
My mother lost her own mother when she was a teenager, and there was no doubt that her first child (who turned out to be me) would receive that name. However, horror of horrors, my other grandmother had the same name. And she lived with us. The rabbi my dad consulted said that they couldn’t give the baby the same name. Okay, Grandmother One had two names (compare with Mary Ann, for example), and I could have the second name. Mother chose an English name that “matched,” one that she had always liked and one that I have always disliked. I’m rather partial to the Hebrew name – even considered changing to it. Or we could have translated it to something like Eve. I vowed that if I ever had a daughter, she would have the other name – for both my grandmothers.
What transpired thirty-five years ago made me decide to keep it, but it’s a joke now.
During the Sixties many women were choosing to keep their own family names, rather than changing to that of their husbands. It was a time of mixed emotions, for no matter how independent we thought we were, falling in love and deciding to marry really weakened the impact of The Feminine Mystique. But my maiden name had always been a problem.
Oh, sure, it was “ethnic,” but it was such a strange name that no one recognized what ethnos it came from. It was hard to spell, hard to pronounce; even teachers had a problem pronouncing it because they couldn’t figure which language to use. The first editor I ever worked for said it looked like a typo.
Our family name was also inconvenient because it came at the end of the alphabet. Both Sister and I resented being placed at the back of the class because teachers like to seat us in alphabetical order. I suspect Brother resents it to this day.
In any case, the only inconvenience in taking my husband’s name was that I had to get a new social security card. And I’ve had this simple name ever since. I have on occasion thought I might use both my name and his, but a cousin has become rather well known as an author, and I wouldn't want him to think I was borrowing his fame.
The joke? Husband’s name is strange to begin with. Imagine a man named David Davis or Johnny Johnson. Husband's name is like that, and I don’t know how come, because his parents died when he was an infant. Now imagine that David Davis meets and marries a woman whose first name is Davida. That’s us. (I was afraid some rabbi would tell us we couldn't live in the same household, but, fortunately, our Hebrew names are not the same.) A new bank teller was checking my endorsements against the deposit slip this morning, and laughed. My standard response: I only married it; he was born with it.
I told Husband – before we were married – that I planned on naming a child for my grandmothers. It turns out that it was also his mother’s name. Superstition or not, I’m convinced that child was named more than twenty years before she was born.
