Meanings of the names Zelig and Zalman

Zalman, I believe IS a variation of Solomon (Shlomo). I don’t know about the others. Was Yekusiel one of Shlomo Hamelech’s names???? I believe he was called Yedidya, but maybe also Yekusiel. If so, that could account for it being Zalman.

Zelig means to laugh, and therefore often goes with either yitzchok[laughing] or Osher [fortunate]

Give Ivrit names and you wouldn’t be grappling with these issues.

If not giving and Iwrit name from the Tenach, might just as well give an English name.

147, I disagree, yiddish names have been used by gedoimlim over the centuries, and are listed in shulchon oruch and are therefore uncomparable to english names.

Oomis, why is Yitzchok eisik any different than Shlomo Zalman or even Osher Zelig?

It’s not really, it’s just that Yitzchak IS Isaac, and sounds like it. The other names might have the same meaning, but do NOT sound like each other.

What makes Yiddish-Isaac any better than English-Isaac?

Feterleibel, where in shulchan orach are yiddish names listed?

Yiddish names are listed In the beis shmuel at the end of hilchois gittin.

Yiddish names are listed In the beis shmuel at the end of hilchois gittin. “

When the Gemarah was written down, there was no such thing as Yiddish. Names written in the Beis Shmuel have nothing to do with Gemarah per se. That is not a ra’ayah.

I wonder of Pia is in any way derived from Puah (though the Italian “pious” does make sense also, as many Jews lived in Italy).

Why does it often go with alexander? “

Which brings up another point. Alexander is mamesh the name of a GOY, but it is in common use for Jews. Why? Because he was good to the Jews. So was King Koresh, but you don’t find too many Jewish people by that name.

Miritchka, your example is a good one. But in English, Bobby, Susie, Kathy, Davey, also fit your example, but no one frum names their kids those names as their JEWISH name. Hebrew is the Loshon that Am Yisroel received great credit for not changing, both in speaking and in naming their children. I personally feel that is as important today as it was then.

I am not chalilah criticizing anyone who names in Yiddish, but I also never understood why it continues to be done today, especially when the English language has made Torah even more universally accessible than Yiddish ever did. That Yiddish unifying factor, being the language spoken by all Eastern European Jewry, including the Gedolim of those generations, has always been cited to me as the major reason for naming in Yiddish. So how is English today, ANY different from that? No one has satisfactorily ever answered that question for me yet. And if anyone here can enlighten me, I would appreciate it very much (not looking to argue).

I mostly agree with Oomis and not with DaasYochid.

I would point out, though, that it’s Lashon HaKodesh, not, lihavdil, “Hebrew”, that we have not changed.

Yeshivish English, as in English interspersed with “Torah learning” words, is, “limaaseh”, far more unifying than Yiddish.

How many baalei bayis learn with an Artscroll gemara or other English-translated work, some of whom would be unable to do so without these English-language works? How does Yiddish even begin to compare, as Oomis indicated?

If anything, Yiddish, today, outside of Chassidic communities, is more polarizing than unifying as it divides between the speakers and the non-speakers.

As well, making Yiddish a primary language along with its attendant downgrading of English also results in certain Jews having an embarrassingly poor command of the English language, which can be a chilul Hashem, CH”V.

For those who do not speak Yiddish at home yet, for various reasons, attend a Yiddish-teaching school, this nostalgic infatuation with Yiddish makes their schooling unnecessarily harder than it already is and they lose out academically versus had they been taught in English.

On the same topic, Jews in various sefardic countries (before the Zionists persuaded them to come to Israel at which time the Zionists proudly shmaded them) have had their own dialects of the local language yet they continued to use Lashon HaKodesh names. From where did some Ashkenazim get this idea that Yiddish is the new Lashon HaKodesh?

I, too, cannot understand why anyone would give up naming their son after Moshe Rabbeinu, the Avos, malachim, neviim, et al. and instead give them a “Yiddish name”.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/is-yiddish-holy/

HaKatan, what you said about Sephardic Jews is not correct. Sephardim did not continue to use Lashon Kodesh names, as you stated. Have you ever come across older Sephardic ladies named Estrella, Mercedes, Marcella, Farha or Messody? Or men named Machlouf or Masud? Sephardim often adopted Arabic or Spanish names. The new generation of Sephardim, similar to Ashkenazim now changing Hershel to Tzvi and Raizel to Shoshana, are using Hebrew (and sometimes English) variations of those names for their children.

Are their any Sephardim who want to add (or correct) names to my list?

I don’t think Yiddish is inherently holy, but part of kedusha, which means separation, is our being distinct from the nations. Yiddish, as a language unique to Jews, keeps us unique. English obviously doesn’t. “

DY, I accept what you are saying, BUT – Hebrew did that first, and was and is the language of our people since we WERE a people. Yiddish is a relatively modern invention (though the same could be said for modern day Hebrew, to a certain extent), whose roots are in German. And just as not all Hebrew-speaking Jews are frum and holy, sadly, neither all those who speak Yiddish. The separatism of kedusha was not why people began to speak Yiddish. They needed a unifying way to communicate with Jews throughout Europe, and thus evolved this new language. It could have and SHOULD have IMO, been Hebrew all along. It must be that many people spoke some smattering of German in each country, and it thus became a common language after further Jewish refinements.

I have nothing against Yiddish, though I don’t speak it. It is a rich and colorful language, filled with much of our heritage, and replete with expressions that just cannot be translated adequately into English. It is a language that always makes me think of my grandparents with much love. I have a similar bond with my Israeli Mishpacha when I speak to them in Ivrit.

Does this mean that we should start naming children in “Yeshivish”?

Of course, chcham. My daughter-in-law’s cousin’s niece, Elisheva Genendel W (the W is to try to maintain privacy) just named her twins Lechoira & Lemaaseh (lech & lemm for short, they’re so cute). She’s hoping she won’t have such a hard time getting them into a top Cheder in Lakewood. Her older twins, Sarah & Bayla are still on a list. But should be accepted any day now. (They just turned 11.)

Hakatan: Are you for real? Taking random L”K or even Aramaic words used in learning is just as logical as naming after a chosheve ancestor that had a Yiddish name? Please, you may not be infatuated with Yiddish names but you’re taking this a tad too far, IMHO.

And Oomis, we don’t know the original for many Yiddish names. Also, boys’ names are usually given in L” K or in a combination with its Yiddish counterpart, while girls’ Yiddish names usually stand on their own. So Tzvi Hersh was likely named at his Bris as Tzvi, or perhaps Tzvi Hersh; while Feiga was probably named just that. I don’t know why this is so. Many frum people don’t want to change the name of the one after who they are naming a child.

I don’t know why this is so. Many frum people don’t want to change the name of the one after who they are naming a child. “

I don’t diminish the chashivus of the person for whom a child may have been named. But – why was the ORIGINAL person named in a language that is not L”K (which includes Aramaic, because it is Gemorah Loshon)? Let’s say that someone is a Baal Teshuvah who never had a Jewish name at all and his birth father was a non-Jew. His name is Steven. He became a frum Yid and a great baal middos tovos and outstanding learner. But his name is still Steven (ben Avraham, I guess). Any Jewish name that he may adopt, was not given to him at birth. So should kids be named Steven after the name by which he was always known? I doubt that you will find many such children.

BTW, my Rov ZT”L told me when I was first naming children, that it is ALWAYS a zechus to the person for whom a child is being named, to find the L”K translation of the Yiddish name and use that instead. Thus, a girl might be named Tzipporah, in memory of a Faigah.

It is not necessarily true that a male Jewish name is followed by a Yiddish name (when the Yiddish is used)that reflects that Jewish name, i.e. Tzvi Hersh. I had an Uncle Sholom Mendel. Isn’t Mendel typically preceeded by Menachem? But he was named for a Sholom and a Mendel. How is Mendel any more “heilige” than Mark? The Mendel for whom he was named might have been a a very nice poshuteh Yid. But there are a LOT of poshuteh Yidden who have secular names, who are wonderful people. No one is giving their children those names at the Omud.

I know it is difficult for some people to see this point, because we have been conditioned to think of Yiddish as extremely holy, our Mama Loshon (though Sephardic Jews might argue that point). But if we are truly objective, Yiddish TODAY is really no more holy in the sense that it may have once been, than English is. Torah is disseminated in English in numbers far greater than Yiddish ever was. Most Jews speak English, even those who speak Yiddish in this country, so English is the real unifier today. I am not putting down Yiddish. I simply do not understand how it came to be revered to the point that people stopped using L”K for naming their children, and started using Jewish vernacular instead.

I was told that Yiddish names were given so that the men could have secular names to use for business. Whether that is true or not, giving my kids a yiddish name was not an option.

I read Rabbi Krohn’s Bris Milah book carefully before each bris to guide us. We intended to use only one name for each child but, unfortunately, many of the kids are named after very special neshamos who died young and we needed to add a name.

LAB: I once met someone named Yedidyah. The nurse wrote Jedidiah on the birth certificate. His parents changed it legally at age 5 or 6 before he started school because they realized it could be quite embarrassing for him.

The Kaminetsky family, by the way, uses one name per child, and always Biblical. “

That may be so, but Rabbi Mordechai Kaminetzky was always known (at least as a child) as “Motty.” I know that personally.

SYAG, if what you say is so (and I totally accept that it could be the likely reason), kal v’chomer that Yiddish language names are not really appropriate today (for BUSINESS purposes????!!! Not even TORAH-related???)).

I had a relative with a VERY unfortunate-sounding Jewish name. It was actually a corrupted form of her ENGLISH name which was Bertha (which came fiorst, the chicken or the egg – I do not know). I doubt that any girl was ever named after her. And there is no Hebrew equivalent. The name simply had no real meaning.

If we remove our emotionalism from all this (but that was my Great-GRANDMOTHER, she was a tzadeikes!!! The Rebbie was a GAON!), and look honestly at the naming issue, I think a reasonable thinker could understand the position many of us are expressing here. Very simply – A Jewish name is a name rooted in the Torah Loshon. All else, may reflect an emotional component, a connection to something that should not be minimized in its importance, but is nonetheless NOT in keeping with “lo shinu es shemoseihem.”

Oomis- There’s a big difference between Mendel and Mark. Mendel is a nickname for Menachem. Mark is a gospel. Although I would not give Mendel without Menachem, Mendel on its own is still better than Mark.

What I’m saying is that because these names were already transliterated by those before us, it has gotten some chashivus and uniformity. Spelling of names (especially by Gittin) is no simple matter. I may spell Adolph differently than you, the next guy can have another way of spelling it, and it can lead to a lot of confusion and problems as to which one is “correct”. I am not sure you are right about Psukim as there are names that don’t have a corresponding Posuk. I was assuming, and perhaps I’m wrong, that since English names are different many of them might not have Psukim.

Now, to throw in a monkey wrench, if I am a Bal Tshuva for example and want to give the ” English” name John after my Grandfather, can I spell it Yud Aleph Hei Nun? Nobody ever called him Johnathon nor did he have that on his birth certificate, and I think English names are just as holy as Yiddish/Hebrew ones… I know you didn’t mean that, I’m just trying to point out the difference. Yes, despite names like Yitzchok Eizik in Yiddish, using English now would be a disaster… Yiddish names with all their imperfections are pretty much established.

Thanks Golfer for the laugh and reality check… The funny thing is that Oomis stated she doesn’t want to argue, but was really set in her views. Oh, well, moving on…