Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Jewish baby names – some guidelines on how to pick one

Choosing Jewish baby names is a complicated process. Naming any child is a statement of character and something that will stay with the child forever. It's possibly the only thing that you will ever truly control with your child - unless of course he or she becomes hugely famous and decides to opt for their own choice – perhaps something like Elton….It can also be really difficult to reach consensus with your partner.

When my wife and I were choosing a name for our son we found that working from a book full of names was the surest way of not reaching agreement. We therefore came up with these general guidelines:

  • We wanted the name of our baby to be both a statement of what we hope he will become as well as where he came from
  • As Ashkenazi Jews we decided to name our baby after a deceased relative. As mentioned in an earlier post Sephardi Jews often name after the living. I also know of many people that name their babies based on a Jewish holiday coinciding with the birth or the Torah portion corresponding to the week of the birth
  • We gave a lot of thought to the meaning of the name so that it might have a positive effect on his future. You might want to check out this site dedicated to Jewish baby names as it gives the meanings to a lot of names
  • We wanted our son to have a Hebrew name that could be used in English too
  • We wanted the name to be unusual but not too unusual!
Now these are very personal guidelines that we used and I’m not suggesting that anyone must use them when looking for their Jewish baby names. Everyone will have their own view on what is important. The point is it can be very difficult naming a Jewish baby. There are often many pressures from ones family and you and your partner may have differing views. That’s why my wife and I felt the best way to reach agreement was to put down on paper our joint objectives and work from those guidelines to reach agreement. It seemed to work!





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25 comments:

Baby Names said...

Indeed an informative article. I have collection of Jewish baby names. I develop this liking after visiting babynology.com and have found ideas like this. Even i am quite pleased with maria carey' baby names. Truly exciting!

Ben said...

Hy! Nice Blog. you are right. Naming a baby is very important and crucial decision taken by the parents. Family members start suggesting names for a little baby and even parent do indulge in internet researching to look for a particular name according to their choice.

Baby Names said...

I would like to share Jewish baby names with you here. Let you visit this link; http://www.suggestbabynames.com/jewish_names.html

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