We send out a unique personal prayer when we name a newborn. Whatever public brakhot we may say, it is the quiet uniting of received tradition and imagined future that trembles within us at this moment of holy decision. Marking our child with a name, we link him or her to what we pray will be a chain of honor.
Is there halakha about naming? R. Aryeh Lebowitz, rabbi of Congregation Beis Haknesses of North Woodmere, New York, offers abundant rabbinic resources in his 26-page exploration, “Choosing a Name for a Child,” in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society (Vol. XLVII, Spring 2004, 33–59). R. Lebowitz cites R. Betzalel Stern, who “explained that naming after the relative of a father or mother is a fulfillment of the mitzvah of kibbud av v’eim [honoring parents].”
How we fulfill that mitzvah is a matter of custom, or minhag. And customs, in our time, frequently collide. When Jews of different backgrounds marry, clashing minhagim about names can create problems.
Given the emotionally fraught atmosphere surrounding a birth, it’s no surprise that avoidance of arguments over the choice of a name overrides any naming tradition. R. Lebowitz notes, “The Chida (Yosef Ometz, 288, 362) writes that it is especially important to avoid any sort of strife in the house of a newborn and [its] mother, as this can cause danger to the baby.”
My teacher, Rivy Poupko Kletenik, head of school of the Seattle Hebrew Academy, cites a tradition that parents have ruah hakodesh (Divine intuition) when naming their child. An important point she makes is that it is the parents, and only the parents, on whom the responsibility falls to name the child. Other family members may expect, hope, suggest, and urge, but it is the parents’ choice that remains the unannounced surprise when the baby is named in public.
Sephardic-Ashkenazic Differences
When a Sephardic Jew and an Ashkenazic Jew have children together, the naming decision has been known to get sticky. Many Sephardic grandparents expect the honor of seeing their names carried on in their lifetimes. However, most Ashkenazim expect to see their children’s children named for their departed loved ones, and may cringe at the idea of naming for a living forebear.
Sephardic naming practices, however, are far from uniform. For example, Miriam Levy, raising her large family in Seattle, didn’t really know that it wasn’t her Moroccan-heritage husband’s family custom to name for living relatives. Miriam’s expectation, following the practice of her Montreal Syrian-heritage family, was to do just that. And she did so, with children who carry names of all four living grandparents. Miriam’s motherin-law, Beloria, delights in her special relationship with the granddaughter who lives nearby and bears her name, but admits that she hadn’t expected the honor, as it wasn’t part of her French-Moroccan background. Miriam has come to understand the practice of honoring living grandparents as “a Seattle tradition,” a heritage of the community’s founding Turkish immigrants.
Rabbi Simon Benzaquen, the rav of the Levys’ synagogue, Sephardic Bikur Cholim, comes from a Spanish-Moroccan background. In contrast to the French-Moroccan tradition, his family does, indeed, name for living relatives. He and his Ashkenazic-heritage wife fully expected that their grandchildren would carry their names, and, in fact, they do.
Blogger Hannah Katsman, writing at www. amotherinisrael.com, has posted lists of the “Top 20 Israeli Baby Names,” with labels H (Haredi), NR (National Religious), and S (Secular), demonstrating that names are very influenced by community. But, interestingly, the top name for boys on all three lists is “Noam,” and “Shira” comes in second for all three girls’ lists.
Unusual, Dangerous, and Troublesome Names
Most intriguing are Katsman’s postings about the recent Israel-centered controversy over unusual baby names. She writes: “My all-time favorite unusual girl’s name is Kefira. The parents saw the feminine form of lion on a list of baby names. Unfortunately, Kefira has a much more common meaning—heresy.” This leads us to take note of the proposed Knesset bill to create a Public Names Committee, composed of an educator, a psychologist, and a social worker, to intervene in cases where parents choose a name that could be damaging to a child. Has it come to this?
Of course, there are traditional notions, as well, of names that might cause harm to a child. “If someone died before having children, you should add another name too,” says Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, former chair of the Rabbinical Council of America and rav of Seattle’s (Ashkenazic) Congregation Bikur Cholim–Machzikay Hadath. “It’s also discussed in the responsa literature whether one should name for someone who died young. There’s an extensive teshuvah from R. Moshe Feinstein, that if the person died a tragic death, one should add another name.” That is why one does not name after the prophet Yishayahu, who was murdered, but rather uses the name Yeshaya.
The names we choose for a child connect us to lives beyond this new life. The power of naming humbles us.
What about naming a child Yishmael? According to R. Kletenik, “A midrash says the original Yishmael did teshuvah [repented], but when we use the name now, we are naming for the tanna [Mishnaic rabbi].
“The idea,” he continues, “is not to name for a rasha [an evil person].” The understanding is that if you want to use a family name, but feel that the person named for was not worthy, you can have in mind as well a different person with that name.
Choosing a Name Out of a Hat
Sometimes, even when you pick a name just because you like it, you never know its significance. This recalls the story, published in Hadassah magazine, of an American couple who ran out of family names and chose the name Simcha, whether a boy or a girl, because they liked the name and were planning to make aliyah. Years later, while doing a family search at Yad Vashem, they discovered that their son, Simcha, was carrying the name of a relative who had perished in the Shoah.
We all have name stories, whether our names are in Hebrew, English, Ladino, Yiddish, Russian, Spanish, or some other reflection of the geography of Jewish life. The sources are familial, literary, aesthetic, Zionist, or just hopeful. The names we choose for a child connect us to lives beyond this new life. The power of naming humbles us. Will this new person like the name? Will someone else in the family be glad or disappointed?
In my own extended family, we have four different “G” names among our cousins—Golda, Golda Sue, Gloria Golda, and Gay Claire—all for my grandmother, Golda Simon Yellen, who immigrated from Poland via Ellis Island to Beaumont, Texas, around 1910. She lives on in hand-me-down memories. Each of us remembers the tender voice of her parent—Golda’s child—telling stories of her kindness and strength. Our shared Hebrew name, Haya Golda, taught us, through our parents’ stories, the tradition of adding “hai” to a name in hopes of fooling the Angel of Death—and the limited power of that tradition, as it didn’t work for our grandmother, whose two daughters and five sons mourned her early passing. I named my first son for two of hers. May his children’s lives be blessed with the faith his greatgrandmother inspired in hers.