To the Editor:

I have just finished reading what, to me, was a truly fascinating article: “Jewish First Names Through the Ages” (November 1955), by Rabbi Benzion C. Kaganoff, an old cheder classmate of mine and a fine scholar. . . .

My wife and I are both in the field of Jewish education, and we never know whether to be more exasperated or amused when a pupil in our Hebrew School either has no idea what his Hebrew name is (there are times when the parents don’t know, either) or tells us stammeringly that it’s Yoche, Feivel, Henya, or Chisha! . . . Believe it or not, the classmates of such children, though knowing nothing, or next to nothing, of Yiddish, invariably sense the phonetic oddness of such names as compared to the genuine Hebraic sound of their own, and do not fail to show their amusement. Things went so far in one of my classes that a boy named Fred, whom a previous teacher had named Pinchas, confessed to me secretly that Feivel was his real name and would I please never use it in class? Now I can use Rabbi Kaganoff’s information and call him Uri—though I doubt if it’s wise to tell him that Feivel goes back to Phoebus! . . .

Another reason for our personal interest in this article is that we finally found out the origin of the name Breindel, which was that of my paternal grandmother. My wife and I, before our daughter’s birth, discussed the possibility of translating this into Hebrew. . . . And now that we know it means “Brunette,” what are we to do for future possible daughters? . . .

As a last observation, let me point out that a sister of mine, named Edith in English and “Ita” in Yiddish, has followed the trend the Rabbi mentions of eliminating the “foreign” accretions. She has been in Israel over four years and has adopted Yehudit as her Hebrew name. She will be appalled to learn, I know, that her Yiddish given name is related to Yente and Yetta, and intrigued about its coming from Juanita. . . .

Final question to Rabbi Kaganoff: what’s the source of Chisha, anyhow?

Morris Springer
New York City

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To the Editor:

In his stimulating article concerning “Jewish First Names Through the Ages,” Rabbi Benzion C. Kaganoff refers to the assimilation of names by Jews in America. This phenomenon is, perhaps, best illustrated by names like Milton, Sidney, and others which have become “Jewish” names in the United States because Jews have used them so frequently.

In pre-World War I Germany and the Austrian monarchy, a comparable development took place. Siegfried, Siegbert, Sigismund, and similar names also became “Jewish” names and, for that reason, were eventually avoided by non-Jews. In fact, the combination of these names with typically Jewish family names produced strange bedfellows as, for example, Sigmund Freud or Siegfried Moses (a veteran Zionist leader in Germany).

While French and Italian Jews use both Hebraic and non-Hebraic first names, there appears to be no case where a non-Hebraic name has come to be considered a “Jewish” name, probably because of the small number of Jews in either France or Italy.

Ernest Maass
New York, N.Y.

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To the Editor:

I was very much interested in your publication of “Jewish First Names Through the Ages” by Benzion C. Kaganoff. . . .

Permit me to contradict Rabbi Kaganoff’s statement that there is no trace in the Bible for the (incidentally not only American, but universal) Jewish tradition of naming children after deceased relatives.

The Biblical source is Deuteronomy 25:6: a childless widow is required to marry the brother of her deceased husband (yibbum); the first son is to be named after the deceased first husband “to prevent his name from becoming extinct in Israel.”

With this in mind, Jews for centuries named their newborn boys after deceased grandfathers, etc., thus keeping the name “alive in Israel.”

Albert J. Phiebig
White Plains, New York
[Mr. Phiebig is the former secretary of the
Jewish Genealogical Society of Berlin.—Ed.]

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To the Editor:

I enjoyed reading Benzion C. Kaganoff’s article on Jewish first names throughout the ages. 1 always thought, however, that “poor banal Yente had an exotic origin” in genteel Gentile rather than in Juanita; also that “the wretched Yachne” is not the Biblical Yocheved, but the medieval-romantic Jacinthe (Hyacinth).

B. G. Kayfetz

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Executive Director
Joint Public Relations Committee
Canadian Jewish Congress and
B’nai B’rith Central Region
Toronto, Canada

To the Editor:

May I point out an oversight in Rabbi Kaganoff’s interesting account of Jewish first names? “Yigal” is mentioned, among others, as an example of an Israeli name of recent coinage. Actually, this name is quite ancient and seems to have been in use through much of the Biblical period. In Numbers 13:7 we read of “Igal the son of Joseph,” one of the twelve spies, in II Samuel 23:36 of “Igal the son of Nathan,” one of David’s guard, and in Chronicles 3:22 of “Igal” a descendant of David. Unfortunately, the Hebrew “Yigal” was neither consistently nor recognizably rendered by the King James translators.

Myron Robinson
Frederick, Md.

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