Have you ever come across two people with seemingly identical names but discovered they are actually pronounced differently and might actually be different names? My daughter has a classmate named Batya (Basya in Ashkenazic pronunciation) and another one named Bitya, and it got me thinking: how did these two names – spelled the same in Hebrew without vowels – come to be mixed up so often? Is one name correct and the other just a mistake? Let’s discuss.
Many people think that Pharaoh’s daughter was named Batya, but in truth if you read Tanach closely, you will see that the Masoretic text of the Bible that we use actually says that her name was “Bitya bat Paro” (I Chronicles 4:18), with the initial bet vocalized with a chirik, rather than a patach.
So where does the name Batya come from? It might be as simple as the power of habit. Without vowels (nikkud), people instinctively read words the way that they’re most familiar. Since Batya is more popular today, readers tend to default to it when they see bet-tav-yud-hey written without vowels. And maybe that’s why people think the Pharaoh’s daughter was named Batya.
But how did this “mistake” of reading of the name as Batya start, if it’s pretty clear that her name in the Bible explicitly is indeed Bitya?
As we might remember from grade school, it was Pharaoh’s daughter who saved baby Moses when he was put in a basket on the Nile River. The Torah reports that not only did she save the Jewish boy, but she even took him into her home and raised him like a son. In fact, it was Pharaoh’s daughter who gave Moses his name Moshe (Exodus 2:10)!
This leads us to a profound Midrash, which will help answer the issue at hand: The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah §1:3) recounts a divine exchange: “G-d said to her, ‘Moses was not your son, and yet you called him your son. So too, you are not My daughter, and yet I will call you My daughter,’ as it says ‘Bitya.’” In this passage, the Midrash, my implication, shifts the pronunciation of the Pharaonic daughter’s name from Bitya (as it is vowelized in Masoretic text of the Bible) to Batya. Essentially, the Midrash is telling us to parse her name as though it were comprised of the Hebrew words bat (“daughter”) and yud-hey (a two-letter form of G-d’s name, sometimes known as the digrammaton), even though the name as it actually appears in the Bible is not pronounced with a patach on the first letter.
This interpretative leap wasn’t lost on later scholars. The Lubavitcher Rebbe known as the Tzemach Tzedek (1790-1826) marshalled this Midrash to support his halachic ruling that decided that one should spell the name Batya in a gett as bet-tav-yud-hey, even though the way that word is pronounced in the Bible is Bitya (as though there were an additional yud after the bet). Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky (1928-2022) offered a beautiful rationale: the shift from Bitya to Batya imbues the name with an added positive connotation, as with the Batya pronunciation, the name connotes the idea of Divine filiation, branding one who bears the name a “daughter of G-d” in a way that somewhat parallels the idea that the Jewish people as a collective are the “children” of G-d (Deuteronomy 14:1).
But not all explanations are quite so mystical. Rabbi Shaul Katz of Plotzk looks at this question from a historical angle. He writes that Pharaoh’s daughter was really named Bitya (as recorded in the Bible), but because that was originally a gentile name, when we refer to her, we want to give her a more admirable name, so we call her Batya. According to this, the name given to her at birth was Bitya, but G-d later amended it to Batya, as reflected in the Midrash cited above.
Interestingly, some argue the exact opposite: her original name was Batya, but she changed it to Bitya as an act of humility. They compare this to the Biblical name Milka, a humbler counterpart to the loftier Malka (“queen”). While this theory doesn’t quite align with the Midrash’s portrayal of G-d renaming her, it at least underscores how fluid the perception of names can be across time and traditions.
The truth is that the treatment of names in legal documents such as gittin (bills of divorce) and ketubot (marriage contracts) offers a fascinating window into the onomastics of Jewish names. In our case, the Beis Shmuel rules that if a woman named Bat-Sheva is nicknamed Batya, then her gett should read: “Bat-Sheva, who is called Batya,” spelling Batya as bet-tav-yud-hey, consistent with the Biblical name for Pharaoh’s daughter (again, even though that pronunciation differs from the original Bitya).
This ruling suggests that Batya may have originated as a nickname for the more formal Bat-Sheva, a point corroborated by Dr. Alexander Beider in his dictionary of Ashkenazi names. According to Beider, Batya evolved as a derivative (perhaps a nickname or diminutive) of Bat-Sheva, rather than being a simple misreading of the Biblical Bitya.
Halachic authorities like Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank (1873-1960) agree that the name Batya is written bet-tav-yud-hey in a gett, regardless of its divergence from the Biblical pronunciation. However, the Aruch HaShulchan appears to challenge this approach, although he might be discussing the (Yiddish) names Basa or Basha, as opposed to Basya.
Now that we spell Batya as per the above, the question arises for a woman whose name is Bitya. Should the spelling of her name be changed to reflect the fact that the Biblical spelling is now associated with the new name Batya? Or should the name Bitya be spelled with an added yud to clarify that the initial bet should be vocalized with a chirik (as a gett has no vowelization)? Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910-1995) instructed that even a woman named Bitya should have her name spelled bet-tav-yud-hey in a ketubah in line with the Biblical spelling, despite the modern tendencies to pronounce that name as Batya.
In private correspondence with me, Rabbi David Rue (a dayan on the beit din of the Rabbinical Council of California) essentially concurred with that ruling, but added an interesting caveat: if for whatever one had to write both of these names (Batya and Bitya) in the same gett (e.g., if the husband’s father was not Jewish, so we write his mother’s name in the gett, so there are two female names being mentioned in the same gett), then he recommends differentiating between them by spelling Batya as bet-tav-Yud-hey and Bitya as bet-yud-tav-yud-hey (with the extra yud).
Going back to the question about Pharaoh’s daughter, Rabbi Eliezer Chaim Deutsch of Bonyhad (1850-1915) claims that the historical Bithiah who saved Moses was really named Batya, but that since it is considered dishonorable to G-d for us to refer to a mere mortal as His “daughter,” Scripture changed the vocalization of her name to Bitya. Thus, the Biblical vocalization as Bitya reflects a deliberate shift to avoid implying that a human could be a literal “daughter of G-d.”
The idea of referring to G-d as having a daughter may seem anthropomorphic or even evoke Christological associations – concepts that stand in stark contrast to Jewish theology, which emphasizes G-d’s transcendence and non-corporeality. Thus, it makes sense that even if her name was originally Batya, the Bible might change the pronunciation of her name as Bitya to avoid giving the wrong idea.
Nevertheless, the name Batya itself actually does fit in with typical Biblical naming conventions and how they use theophoric names that incorporate references to G-d along with familial or relational terms. Other examples of such names in the Bible include Benayahu (literally, “son of G-d”) – the name of one of King Solomon’s army chief – which combines ben (“son”) with the theophoric element yahu (three out of four letters of His Tetragrammaton). Similarly, Achiyahu or Achiyah (Ahijah in English) – the prophet who justified Jeroboam breaking off from the Kingdom of Judah and who taught Elijah the Prophet – links the kinship term ach (“brother”) with G-d’s name. Obviously, these names highlight a figurative, rather than literal, familial relationship with the Divine, emphasizing the close bond between human beings and their Creator, rather than implying any physical parentage or siblinghood, G-d forbid.
In this context, Batya can likewise be understood as a metaphoric title, signifying the elevated spiritual status of Pharaoh’s daughter. By rescuing and raising Moses, she forged a unique connection to the Jewish people and to G-d, thus earning her a name (or perhaps epithet) that reflects her moral and spiritual legacy, rather than any literal Divine paternity. This perspective aligns with the Midrash’s interpretation that G-d bestowed the name Batya upon her as a recognition of her actions, not as an intrinsic aspect of her genetic lineage.
