HOW I GOT MY NAME
OH -you want to know how I came about receiving the beautiful name of 'Barbara Ann' - well...............you must be prepared for a short version - when I was 25 y.o. I asked my Mother - but first I will tell you that I knew my middle name was from my maternal great-grand-motherAnna who was a pistol and lived well into her 90's. Anna in Hebrew is Channah or Hannah (I found that out at my Bat Mitzva-so again I bring up my first name-nonchalantly my Mom states there was a lady in the United States named Barbara Hutton who was a millionaire and in the newspaper daily-you can figure out the rest.
HOW MY BROTHERS GOT THEIR NAMES
Once upon a time my Mom, the year 1921, she married my Dad. She was 2 months shy of 21 years old. He was 27 and very handsome. A year and a half later she became pregnant with her first child and then came the biggest decision in Jewish life-who are we going to name “the blessed child after? In the Ashkenazi Jews (that’s our family) No problem there as my Mom ’s mother died when she was 1 year old and her Dad when she was 4 years old. Her Mother’s name was Rebecca and her Father’s name was Morris. Now you must adjust the mental I.Q to American Jews of the early 1900’s - they wanted to have their children’s name sound like they were definitely American - so here was the new tradition :
First let’s take the name Rebecca - Hebrew translation in english is Rivka - sounds reasonable
but……….she had a boy - you can’t call a boy Rebecca (or can you?no-forget that) Well…….
Jewish people solved that problem in a hurry - JUST USE THE FIRST LETTER - LIKE “R” and then you can call him “ROBERT” (well that settled that problem-but………..Morris?????????? that is really old fashion for the year 1922 = kids might laugh at him in school……so………….
brilliant - let’s use the first letter M and call him Melvin and he can then have the Hebrew name of MOSHE which translates in English to Moses and there for anyone reading this you will now know the real story about how we choose names.
Oh excuse me - I do have to tell you about my other brother - very easy now that you have just learned the rules - his was so simple. Our father’s father (that is our grandfather) died just 2 months before my brother entered this world - so there was no problem-he would carry on our grand-fathers name - READY? his name “Abraham Isaac” so my brother at his BRIS was named “Alvin Irwin” SO SIMPLE
Hope anyone who reads the above will enjoy it as much as I had writing
it - if you want me to go any further with names in my family including my children and grandchildren I WILL enjoy doing it -
Love, MOM, ETC