CHAPTER TWO - Birth Ceremonies and Life Beginnings

A: BACKGROUND

6. SUMMING UP THE NAME GAME: NAMES, IDENTITY AND JEWISH CONTINUITY

The power of names to provide identity, both for the named and for the namer, is explored in a powerful American Jewish story from 1979, "The Woman who lost her Names" by Nessa Rapoport (see bibliography). This story shows us a woman who loses control over the ability to choose both her own use of her name and that of her children. Having lost that control, her own identity as an autonomous human being is called very much into question.

The power of names to preserve cultural identity was recognized by the Sages. There are a series of midrashim which make the point. For example:-

Israel were redeemed from Egypt because they did not change their names. They went down there as Reuben and Shimon and they came back up as Reuben and Shimon. Reuben was not called Rufus nor Judah Julianus, not Joseph Justus. Also because they did not change their language - they continued to speak the sacred tongue.
Midrash: Leviticus Rabbah etc.

In general, names can be understood as extremely important vehicles of group and personal identity. Apart from any aesthetic considerations, it is clear that there are deep questions at work when Jewish parents consider a name for their child.

It is interesting to add another consideration here. We have talked about the cultural significance of names, but we should also emphasize the importance of names as transmitters of family identity and memory. It is an old tradition in many cultures to use names to pass down a sense of continuity within a family. Names are passed down the generations and appear time and time again within a particular family and its history. We see this strongly within the Jewish cultural tradition. It is a valuable tool for Jewish historians who are aided, for example, in connecting different medieval scholars into family chains. Often, we find names that appear several times, perhaps in variant forms, within a single generation as different members of the family commemorate certain significant individuals.

In this respect there is a marked difference in the use of names by Ashkenazim and Sephardim and Eastern Jews. Ashkenazim (Jews who trace themselves back to Central or Eastern Europe) tend only to call children after deceased relatives. Sephardim (Spanish Jews) and Oriental Jews often name their children after living relatives, especially grandparents. Whichever tradition is adopted, both serve the same purpose: the crystallization of family identity and the transmission of that identity to new generations.

There can be no better way of concluding this section on the significance of names than by mentioning a thought put forward by the great German-Jewish thinker, Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig, who came to an appreciation of Judaism and tradition late in his life, made the observation that his parents had given no thought other than aesthetic considerations to their choice of name for him. It was, he observed, as if they had seen a pretty name in the window of a shop and had gone in to purchase it without any thought other than the fact that they liked the name. There was nothing else to his name, he complained: it signified no history, no memory, no associations. He finished by observing wishfully that it would have been good to have been given the name of a holy man or a hero or a family name - anything that resonated with some kind of deeper association beyond the merely aesthetic. A person should be named after somebody or something. Otherwise, he concluded, a name is really only empty breath.