Reply To: Meanings of the names Zelig and Zalman

I have read that the Yekkishe tradition is to give two names, one Hebrew and the other secular. Sometimes they had two people to name after, and they would name after one the Hebrew name and the other the secular one. Otherwise they would try and get secular approximation of the Hebrew name. When the name was ‘Shlomo’, they would call the son Solomon, Salman or Zalman. So the name was written as Shlomo-Zalman, which was really Shlomo/Zalman – either-or. One Hebrew and one secular.