Q&A: Jewish Names

Question: The other day, I heard a lecture about how parents are not allowed to give children non-Jewish names. What’s that all about?

Answer: I am hard-pressed to find a definition of such a thing. What makes a name particularly Jewish or not?

Question: Perhaps a name that is not Hebrew or not in the Tanach?

Answer: Many great Jewish people have had non-Hebrew and non-Biblical names.

Question: So is there anything that is actually prohibited?

Answer: Fabricating prohibitions is prohibited. But for the sake of clarity, I will give some background. The Midrash says that the Israelites in Egypt maintained three distinctive aspects of their native culture: their dress, their language, and their names. Now, although some romantics take this to mean that the Israelites did not learn to speak Egyptian, and only named their children “traditional” Hebrew names, that would be farfetched, for we know that Moses and other Hebrew leaders spoke in front of Pharaoh, and probably not in Hebrew, and that no less than Aaron and his grandson Phinehas had names that are certainly not Hebrew in origin, and more likely Egyptian. Rather, the Midrash is saying that the Hebrew ways were not forgotten, and were maintained despite the adoption of Egyptian mores. Later in history, the sages remarked that certain names, like Lucas and Lous, were simply not borne by Jews (Gittin11b), but they did not mention any prohibition of any sort. The fact is that when our people were in Egypt, they sometimes named their children in Egyptian, and when they were in Babylon and Persia they named their children in Aramaic and Persian, and in the west, sages of the Talmud had names that were meaningful only in Greek and Latin. Yet, in Medieval times we find that there were those who decried the adoption of new names, while others made claims that al pi qabbala, or out of voluntary piety, non-traditional names should not be adopted. The halachic burden of proof rests on those who would claim that an actual prohibition exists. However, parents should also be wise: a Jewish child may encounter unnecessary challenges in life if he has a name that is weird. On the other hand, names can be a source of familial and national pride, and carry a transcendent significance that should be appreciated by parents.

Question: A couple named their child Hallelujah, pronounced Hal-le-lu-YAH. Is that a muttar name? Are we allowed to pronounce it or write it as it is spelled in Hebrew?

Answer: The name in question is no different from any other theophoric name the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews have been using for millennia, and of course is permissible to be given as a name, to be pronounced, and to be written as is, without modification. I personally think it a beautiful name for a child, and imagine the parents wanted to express a profound and lasting gratitude for their God-given child.

Question: But doesn’t it have part of Hashem’s name, which should not be said, or which must be buried if written?

Answer: It certainly has part of God’s name in there. That’s what theophoric names are! Hundreds of names use either el or yah as a prefix or suffix, and is there nothing wrong with that. Elhanan, Hananel, Yohanan, and Hananiah are variations of the same name, as are Yehoshua, Yeshayahu, Elisha’ and Sha’el. No one ever thought that those names could not be pronounced as written, or that they attain a measure of sanctity when they are written. The only major difference is that when yah is the suffix, the hei is completely silent, as opposed to pronounced. In the word hallelujah as it appears in the Psalms, the final hei has a mappiq, making it the closing, pronounced consonant, but in the given name Hallelujah, like other theophoric names of its kind, the final hei is silent, and has no mappiq.

For a while, I was thinking about how it seems that before Moses, the Hebrews only used el as the theophoric factor in their names, and that Moses, by creating the name Yehoshua from Hoshea, was setting a precedent, namely that part of God’s proper, unique name could also be used for naming people, and than I realized that it was actually Moses’s mother, Yocheved, who bears the earliest known name of that kind. I checked some sources, and found that the Daat Mikra notes this phenomenon, and conjectures that the matter was kept in secret tradition by Levi, her father, and that Moses, who was first to whom God made His true name known, (See Exodus 3:13-15 and 6:2-3) revealed the permissibility by his own actions, and according to one Talmudic view, the first Yehonathan in history was his grandson (Judges 18:30).