Question about Jewish naming tradition..

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-20-2003
Question about Jewish naming tradition..
3
Fri, 06-23-2006 - 10:32am

My DH is Jewish, and so far, all my children have been named after family members who have passed away, and we've honored them during the bris. Ever since before my first son was born, I have promised my DH's grandmother that if she passes away, I will name my child after her. We love her very much, and have no problem with this. Our issue this time around is that both my father and DH's father have passed away in the past year. Even though my family is not Jewish, we do honor members of my family as well. Both DH and I feel pretty strongly about naming our child after our fathers...but I wonder what DH's grandma will want us to do. If she asks me yet again to name our child after her if she passes, it will be very tough to forgo one of our fathers to honor her. There is no one in my family left to honor my father, but DH does have siblings who could have children named after his father.

What I'd like to know is how the protocol works in this situation? If there are more than two people who have passed away, do you take the first two, or the last two, or the closest to you? How does it work? I'm not at all certain that DH's grandma would even ask us this time around, as DH's father was her eldest son, so I would think she would want us to honor his memory...but she might not remember about my father, or understand that it is important to me to honor him as well.

I want to be clear, if I tell DH's grandma I will name our baby after her if she passes, we absolutely will! But I'd just like some background information as to what others might do in this situation.

-Sarah

Lilypie 1st Birthday Ticker target="_blank">
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2005
Fri, 06-23-2006 - 11:07am

I'm not an expert. But my experience with my Jewish friends has been that the only solid tradition they have is that they don't name children after living relatives, only after relatives who have passed away. WHICH relatives they choose to honor, has been totally up to them.




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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 06-23-2006 - 12:18pm

Between the time that my first DD and second DD were born both of my grandmothers had passed away. We had secondary infertitlity and I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to have more children. My sister was done having children. We ended up naming our second DD after both of my grandmothers. My DD is Abigail Lillian and my grandmothers were Annette and Lena. Just by coincidence my DH's grandmothers were Alice Audrie and Marjorie Lilly. So, even though DH isn't Jewish, Abby is named after all four grandmothers. Of course there was some strife about which name we should use as a first name and which as a middle name. We chose the initials ALZ over LAZ for two reasons. The first is I think that AZ for initials is really fun (we've started collecting A and Z bookends) and I thought that LAZ looked too much like "lazy."

Is there someway you can combine names with your side of the familly? I hope that your DH's grandmother is still alive to meet and enjoy the baby - and then this will all be moot.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-16-2005
Sun, 06-25-2006 - 10:36am

Could you use one of these names as their hebrew name? While it wouldnt be the name they go around with every day, it's a special name, the one that is called at a bar/bat mitzvah when the person steps up to read from the torah for the first time. With hebrew names too, it seems like every name can be used and only slightly modified for gender. My hebrew name is Esther Miriam, for my great-grandmother, my sister katie, Atara Chana, my sister Maggie, Gavriel. The last name was our great-grandfather's hebrew name, but i dont think anyone would really know that this is a boy's name typically. These names really do mean something personal too. While I don't like the Esther part really, my grandpa just gave me a book he's working on, with memories of his mother and father. Reading about them, and knowing that I'm named after her, made me really happy, and I felt a unique connection. I hope tho that she is able to enjoy and see this child!

Lizzie