Re: OT naming customs

Anton Sherwood wrote:
>
> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > . . . ordinarily you wouldn't "repeat" part of a name so soon
> > generationally, it's disrespectful . . .
>
> Jews are traditionally named for a dead relative.  I have a mental image
> of a particularly fussy Jewish parent going through the family trees to
> identify the most recently-deceased ancestor whose name has not already
> been given to a descendant.
Not exactly how it is in my family, but there's an interesting pattern
in Hebrew names going up the male lineage, my Hebrew name is Chanoch, my
father's is Aharon, my grandfather's was Moshe, my great-grandfather's
was Chanoch again... I think my great-great-grandfather's was Aharon,
but I'll have to check. All of us just happened to be born around the
same time that our great-grandfather died, oddly enough.

My brother's Hebrew name is Moshe, also, but he's named after a
*different* Moshe.

It's worth mentioning that the tradition of naming children after a dead
relative is an Ashkenazic tradition only, as I understand it. Sephardic
Jews traditionally name their children after a _living_ relative, as a
sign of respect.

--
Robert