The custom that I grew up with was giving an English with the same initial as the Hebrew one – therefore, my daughter Avigayil has Abigail on her birth certificate. As she was named after a man named Abba, we asked our Rabbi for a feminine equivalent and this one was of a few that he suggested. My grandkids are named in a similar fashion – Yakov Shmuel is Joshua Kevin (the Shmuel he is named after had a “K” first name) and Binyamin Mattityahu is Benjamin Matthew.
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