Re: OT naming customs

On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 16:04:51 -0800 Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
writes:
> 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.
-

Well, that's only Ashkenazic Jews.  Non-Ashkenazim generally name after
relatives whether they're deceased or still alive.  And talking about
repeating names throughout families, I had a friend in highschool who's
an Egyptian Jew - the patriarch of his 'clan' (as we called it) was named
Ezra, so in every immediate-family of his huge family, there's a boy
named Ezra.  One of the Ezras, Ezra Israel, has a father named Israel
Israel :-P .


-Stephen (Steg)
 "qr?!"