Without names – without the ability to label things – we’d be incoherent. Names are central to our ability to understand the world around us. This is especially true when it comes to people’s names, where a name is not simply a placeholder used to refer to a specific person, but is supposed to reflect the very essence of that person. As the great early chassidic rebbe R. Elimelech of Lezhinsk (1717–1786) puts it, a person’s name is not just the name of his outer body, but the name of his inner soul. In fact, the inner letters of the Hebrew word soul (neshama) spell the word shem (“name”). Thus, one’s name penetrates the very essence of his being.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Judaism attaches a lot of importance to the concept of names – especially to Jewish names. There is even a famous Midrash which states that the Jewish people only merited to be redeemed from Egypt because they had not “changed their names.” This means that because they clung to their Jewish names and did not assimilate by adopting Egyptian naming conventions, Hashem deemed them worthy of taking out of bondage.
But where do Jewish names come from?
If you guessed that Jewish names come from characters in Tanach and Chazal, you’re right. But that’s only part of the story.
While it is true that most typically Jewish names are simply taken from Tanach or Chazal (especially male names), not all do. This is certainly true when it comes to family names (surnames/last names), but also personal names (sometimes called first names or given names) often do not.
Let’s break this down with some easy examples to illustrate this point: Some Jewish names first appear as names of people in Tanach, but were not borne by people mentioned in Chazal. For example, popular names like Avraham, Dovid, Shlomo, and Yisrael are clearly from Tanach, yet you will not find any people in the Mishna or Talmud who had any of those names (although there was an Amora named Avram mentioned in Gittin 50a).
On the flip side, popular names like Akiva, Nachman, Tanchum, and Yose were borne by famous rabbis in the times of Chazal, but were not by any Biblical characters. Other names, like Eliezer, Gamliel, Hillel, Yitzchak, Shimon, Yaakov, Yosef, and Yochanan, appear both in Tanach and in Chazal, and, of course, remain popular today. There are also several popular names that only entered the Jewish onomasticon (that is, the corpus of Jewish names) after the times of Chazal and remain popular today — like Chaim, Feivish, Saadia, and Dov.
All of this is also true on the female side of things: We have purely Biblical names like Rivkah, Sarah, Tziporah, Yehudit, and Yocheved that are not used for any women named in Chazal; we have purely latter names, like Beruriah, Heleni, Kimchis, Martha, and Shlomzion, which appear in Chazal but not in Tanach; and we have names that are borne by women mentioned in both Tanach and Chazal, like Chana, Miriam, and Rachel.
And of course some historical names fall out of favor altogether. It’s always hard to say that a particular name is totally obsolete, but I think we’d all agree that names like Chuldah, Maachah, Eglah, Achsah, Ritzpah, and Rachav, which are used for female characters in Tanach, are pretty rare nowadays. The same is true of the feminine names Bloria, Chova, Chomah, Donag, Pazi, Tavi, and Yalsa, which appear in the Talmud (and not in Tanach).
Similarly, male names like Achira, Chetzron, Gera, Ivtzan, Shmida, Yehu, Tola, and Zimri all appear as names of men in Tanach, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody nowadays who answers to any of those names. There are also male names that appear in Chazal that are rare in present times, like Ashi, Chutzpis, Hamnuna, Hoshaya, Papa, Sheshet, Yochai, and Zeira. There are even male names from the Geonic and Medieval periods that were once used – like Adonim, Chasdai, Donash, Hai, Marinus, Mevasser, Sar-Shalom, Vidal, and Yehudai – and are almost unheard of nowadays.
So you see that the question of where Jewish Names come from is not so easy to answer. In the coming months, this column will take a look at various Jewish names and offer fascinating insights into those names. In the course, we will ask questions like:
In what language is this name originally sourced? The etymology of many Jewish names come from Hebrew (Yocheved) and Aramaic (Abba), but there also some Jewish names derived from Greek (Kalmen), Latin (Shprintza), Arabic (Maimon), German (Golda), and the Slavic languages (Zlata).
What does this name actually mean? Some names are derived from words or roots with clear semantic meanings (like Nosson is clearly related to “giving”), but other names less obviously have an actual meaning. Some names are taken from names of animals (Tzvi, meaning deer) or personality traits (Eidel, meaning gentle), while other names are meant to express one’s devotion to Hashem (Ovadia, meaning servant of G-d) and/or to offer a prayer to Him (Eliezer, meaning G-d is my help).
When did this name start being used? We’ve already seen that some names came into use in Biblical times, some names only came about later in the times of Chazal, and some names came into use even later than that. Of course, we haven’t even touched on newfangled Israeli names like Oz, Lahav, Hodaya, and Liam.
Which famous people bore this name? Sometimes people with obscure or uncommon names feel left out, as though they have no predecessors to relate to, so we will highlight notable individuals that bore such names and explain why they are important people.
We will also discuss general topics related to Jewish names including various halachos and minhagim related to names and naming. These will include issues like: What types of names are okay to give your child, and what types of names should one refrain from giving? When and how do you give a child a name? What’s the procedure for changing a name? How do we determine the proper ways of spelling a name on a kesubah or gett? How do we look at secular names?
You get the idea. At some point, we’ll also talk about last names, nicknames, and pen names. But for now, we will focus on given names, because I find them the most interesting.
Our next article will discuss the first name Avshalom.
