Tell me your name and I’ll tell you where you come from. The origins and significance of Jewish names is a fast developing field of research, a rare window opening onto a world long-thought left behind

Pleasant are their Names

Aaron Demsky
2010, 329 pages

Even if Juliet hadn’t posed the famous question from her balcony, we would still wonder what’s in a name. Most people do not choose their own names, yet a name often defines a person. It signals both a heritage and the parents’ wishes for their child. The 3,500 year span of Jewish existence and the geographical breadth of the Jewish Diaspora have ensured that Jewish names constitute a particularly rich source of cultural insight and personal information concerning the families and individuals that bear them.

The first academic study of Jewish names was carried out by the German scholar Leopold Zunz in 1837, at the request of the Jewish community of Berlin. A royal decree had dictated that Jews were forbidden to use German first names. Zunz’s Namen der Juden demonstrated that Jews had been using names from the surrounding cultures for thousands of years.

Though the field of Jewish onomastics (name study) was born in response to outside pressure, it generally focuses inward. Jewish onomastics has expanded from examining what names Jews carry, to what those names say about their bearers. The study of Jewish names has earned its place in the field of Jewish studies in large part due to the work of Dr. Aaron Demsky, professor of Bar-Ilan University’s department of Jewish History and director of the Project for the Study of Jewish Names there. He is the editor of two recent books on Jewish naming: These are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011 and Pleasant are their Names: Jewish Names in the Sephardi Diaspora, University Press of Maryland, 2010.

History in a Nutshell

Demsky explains that Jewish names not only act as a “cultural code” but also sometimes reflect the history of the Jewish people. For example, following the Hasmonean revolt of 167-165 BCE, the Maccabean names Judah, Eleazar and Johanan increased in popularuty.

Jewish history is full of naming opportunities. Alexander the Great’s conquest of Judea in approximately 333 BCE brought the name Alexander and other Greek appellations into vogue in Jewish circles. The Midrash (Vayikra Raba 13) explains that the high priest refused to place a statue of Alexander in the Temple. Instead, he promised that every boy born to priestly families that year would be named Alexander.