Sunday, July 12, 2009

What's in a name?

So, this guy keeps leaving comments about how I picked my Jewish name. I thought I would humor him and make it a new topic.

I do know people who had it easy: Rebecca becomes Rivkah or Ann becomes Chana or maybe Amelia becomes Amalia. Maybe Molly becomes Malkah, Michelle becomes Michal, Suzy becomes Shoshana or Shoshi. If you have it real easy, your name is something like Sarah so you become Sarah.

3 comments:

  1. What does "Christina" become? :-)

    I actually knew of a Jewish girl named Christina. Very, very rare!

    Mark

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  2. I do, too. It's funny because her older sister has a frummy name so, it's weird. If it was the oldest, I'd be like, ok the parents frummed out after but, no, it's the younger sister with two younger brothers. All the other kids have frummy names.

    I would say Yehudita is the best option.

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  3. Oh, a mention, I'm flattered!

    Mike: Christina Would become "Meshicha"!, but that's not really a name (though "Mashiach" is by Sefaradim).

    "Rebecca becomes Rivkah"- It seems you don't appreciate the complexity of it: any Aryan named Rebbecca is because of direct influence of the (Jewish) Bible. The (Judaic) biblical names have spread everywhere, among the Europeans and among the Arabs a thousand years ago, and today even among people In China (like Chinese Davids)! Then there are names of pure gentile origin, ..like Arthur. Some names seem to go from language to language, like I was saying about Nikolai/Nicole. I myself was surprised when I discovered that the Russian names Yuri and Yevgeni are George and Eugene! (Both Nikolai and Eugene started as Greek by the way).

    Either way, I recentely found the task of nam-translating to be facinating. It didn't start With the Jews though; finding apropriate similar names in other languages seems like an old issue.

    i WOULD wrITE MOre, But ..kEYBoarD prObLeMS!

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