I was one of three girls in my high school class that had a legal name that didn't match my Hebrew one. I suppose it's unsurprising that those girls also had European backgrounds.
Supposedly, my legal name is the same legal name my Hebrew namesake, my great-grandmother, had back in Czechoslovakia, so I have some heritage there too.
For those who have read Herman Wouk's EXCELLENT Inside, Outside knows that the dual-named Jew is an ancient tradition.
So I found it entertaining to read this article how Dear Abby ruffled feathers by advising Indian parents not to give their newborn a "complicated" name that'll make their lives difficult.
For some readers, Ms. Phillips’s advice was simply practical. “She’s right. Get over it,” Ike J. Awgu, a lawyer from Ottawa, wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Awgu, whose father is from the former Biafra and whose mother is from Antigua, said that while his given first name was Ikechukwu, certainly not the easiest name to pronounce, his middle name is Jonathan. He goes by “Ike,” he said, because it is easier for Canadians to understand. Yet he snickered at the suggestion that he was in any way abandoning his culture by using a simplified version of his real name.
The reality, Mr. Awgu, 34, said, is that long, foreign-sounding names do not end up sticking. “The practical effect of that is nobody calls them that,” he said. “So they end up with some truncated name that is Anglicized any way.”
Although, when I asked a classmate then why she didn't have a legal name, she scoffed. "Schools are filled with people with ethnic names. Mine is going to stand out?"
True. My college was a veritable United Nations. It was hysterical watching the professors turn blue pronouncing all the quirky names. I have Chinese co-workers, and some felt a need to Anglicize their names while others do not. It makes no difference. In Europe one hundred years ago, there was no diversity.
Most of my nieces and nephews have legal names, usually when the Hebrew matched up to an easily pronounceable English (like "Simon" for "Shimon"). But if their names did not, then the Hebrew went on the birth certificate.
Like Mr. Awgu said, though, going by a Hebrew name has nothing to do with Jewish pride or lack thereof. In my case, it feels a bit like mesora. I'm probably going to continue the practice. I actually find it a reminder that while we may interact with the outside world, we aren't of it.
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My first names match (Daniel/Doniel although for a long time I used the modern Hebrew Daniel (stress on second syllable) for aliyot). I have two middle names, though. My parents actually regret giving me my English name and wish they had just given me the Hebrew one. Even though they picked the English one first and then just found a Hebrew name that started with the same sound. I don't like the English one much, but I figure I must have it for some reason and that it's a part of me, so it stays.
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