From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Tue Aug 16 2005 - 08:26:40 CDT
Doug Ewell wrote:
>Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
>
>
>>They are used much more largerly, and even the people that have such
>>names tend to write it the way they prefer to be understood. (see for
>>example how many Chinese people choose their romanized names: it's
>>just a new choice, often unrelated with their Chinese name, not even
>>phonetically...).
>>
>>
>
>It's the same among the Vietnamese I know: some continue to go by their
>Vietnamese names, while others have adopted "American" names. Of the
>latter group, only those whose Vietnamese name *very closely* resembles
>an American name tend to pick one that is even remotely close (e.g.
>Danh -> Dan, Đức -> Doug). If there is no American name that is nearly
>an exact match, almost anything goes.
>
Here among American Jews, the Hebrew name and English name are both
given by parents at birth (well, a few days later). Some people use the
same for both, transliterating the Hebrew (Yehoshua, Ariel, Binyamin),
etc. Some really do have two different names, which may or may not be
related, usually phonetically. (They may wind up really only using one
of them, e.g. going by their Hebrew name in pretty much everything
except legal documents). So my (first) name, Mark, is really a pagan
name in origin (devoted to Mars, I think), but my (first) Hebrew name is
מיכה (the prophet Micah)--phonetically similar, in that at least they
start with the same sound. My nephew Oliver's name is שלמה (Solomon),
though, and I don't see the connection there.
My kids are Isaac and Esther, with Hebrew names the obvious equivalents.
~mark
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