Odd names

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  • #616478
    flatbusher
    Participant

    Any theories on why Jews adopted some of the strangest sounding names–especially for women, such as Yenta, Shprintze, Genendel, Kransha,etc–instead of sticking with Hebrew and Biblical names? Somewhere along the way this became an accepted custom, but why? Similarly, there are so many names of taanaim and amorim in the Talmud and yet rarely do you hear them. You thoughts?

    #1105611
    Little Froggie
    Participant

    Oooohhh. If you only knew my name…

    #1105612
    👑RebYidd23
    Participant
    #1105613
    zogt_besser
    Participant

    they are strange to you because they aren’t English. For example, Genendel comes from German and Shprintza allegedly comes from Spanish (Esperanza). Why Jews chose them, I don’t know.

    Also: numerous tannaim have non-biblical hebrew names, and numerous amoraim have non-biblical aramaic names. Rav Moshe writes about this at length, as I quoted in another thread. So you could ask the kashah on them, or you could assume (as does rav moshe) that it’s just not that big a deal.

    #1105614
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    rebyidd – hey, you stole that from me. I must have posted that a few times, and once recently.

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