Legal names | Imamother

amother

Calendula

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 7:19 am

Loch Ness wrote:

How do you feel about your name (not the concept of legal names)?

I hate my English name. Or I hated it my entire life, until one day when applying for my child's SSN I realized it was an okay name and not so bad with my new last name.

However, since I hated my legal name growing up, I knew that I was not going to give a legal name, and would just use their Hebrew names on US documents. Writing this I realize I didn't have a choice anyways: I live in Israel and the Ministry of Interior decides how the name will appear in English, and you cannot ask for a birth certificate in a name other than the one you gave. So for instance if I gave the name Yitzchak יצחק, I could not ask for Isaac to be written on the birth certificate's English column. Because Isaac is a different name: אייזק and the name has to be the same in English and Hebrew.

Whatever, I'm rambling, point is I made a decision not to give English names and now that I've named five kids and registered them as US citizens, I realize even if I'd wanted a different legal name for the US it would not have been possible. LOL

Mazal that I didn't want it anyways.

coffee icecream

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 7:26 am

To point out. One of the praises of the yidden in mitzrayim is lo loshino es lishonom , they didn't change their name. Why isn't that something we should be proud of as frum yidden?
Ok so some ppl can't pronounce the name but how much does that affect for the few times you'll have someone trying to pronounce the name?
Food for thought

amother

Rainbow

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 7:30 am

I didn’t fill out the poll because I hated my original legal name and changed it to my Jewish name legally so now my legal and Jewish name are the same, which I am happy about. But before the change they were not the same name.

amother

Salmon

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 8:07 am

coffee icecream wrote:

Some of us work in the (secular) world! If my only name was Nechama or Yocheved or Chaya it would make me feel silly and awkward every day.

amother

RosePink

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 8:18 am

coffee icecream wrote:

* es shmam

amother

Amaranthus

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 8:59 am

amother Salmon wrote:

Some of us work in the (secular) world! If my only name was Nechama or Yocheved or Chaya it would make me feel silly and awkward every day.

That only makes a difference on how your paycheck is written. Just like Dave and Bob introduce themselves that way instead of saying David and Robert, you can say hi my name is Nancy or Yoyo or whatever you want. The accounting department only need to hear that your full name is Hebrew and Biblical and that they don't need to pronounce it.

Raisin

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 9:01 am

amother Salmon wrote:

Some of us work in the (secular) world! If my only name was Nechama or Yocheved or Chaya it would make me feel silly and awkward every day.

I work with plenty of non Jews. No one can pronounce my name properly and it doesn't have a Ch sound in it. Just a normal Hebrew biblical name. I tell people my name 10 times a day, sometimes I might say, oh, its the hebrew for _______ and give the english equivalent.

You must have colleagues from different nationalities or cultures, do they all take on english sounding names?

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 9:11 am

One of these days maybe I'll get around to changing my name legally to my Hebrew name. It bears no resemblance in sounds or meaning. I hate that my passport, drivers license, bank accounts, etc. have a different name then what the rest of the world calls me and it's caused some confusion many times.

amother

Rainbow

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 9:14 am

amother Salmon wrote:

Some of us work in the (secular) world! If my only name was Nechama or Yocheved or Chaya it would make me feel silly and awkward every day.

I know people with all those names who work in secular environments—Nechama goes by Nicki, Yocheved is just Yocheved (people call her Yo-Heved, and notably, one of the non-Jewish people at her job named her baby daughter “after” Yocheved - they named her “Yo-heaven” LOL

)

Chaya is Kaya. I also know a non-Jewish lady who named her daughter Kaya, way before she had ever met any Jewish people.

amother

Rainbow

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 9:15 am

amother Saddlebrown wrote:

Yup, that was why I changed my legal first name!

amother

Hawthorn

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 10:21 am

My legal name is exactly the same as my Hebrew one. I always hated my name either way. After many years working in the nonJewish world and getting many comments about how pretty the name is, not how weird (which comments haunted my entire childhood), I'm completely reconciled to my legal name. I only get irritating remarks and stupid jokes from Yidden.

amother

Salmon

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 11:25 am

Raisin wrote:

No they don’t. And people can’t pronounce their names. Or they take in a nickname. But If my kids needs to have nickname at work might as well give them an English name. The way I see it we give our kids options. If you want to learn in kollel you have your Hebrew names. If you want to be a corporate lawyer you can use your English name. If you choose not to, that’s fine. But I gave mine the option. And my parents gave me an option. My husbands parents didn’t give an option (only Hebrew name) and he resented it so he didn’t do the same for his (our) kids

amother

Amaranthus

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 12:11 pm

amother Salmon wrote:

It's not really an option this way, though. You are forced to use your legal name for all government documents.

amother

Tomato

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 12:30 pm

I like my name and I am happy my parents put it as my legal name. It happens to be an easy name.
The put everyone's name that way. The most the did was put David for Dovid etc.

I also put my children's actual names.

My inlaws did not, every child has an actual legal name. Most of the children have 2 Hebrew names, so many technically have 3 names. So Yehudis is Judy, but she's not called Yehudis or Judy in real life. It's an old fashioned mindset. We are 3rd generation from the Holocaust. The first generation was very into giving legal names around me.

amother

Amaranthus

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 12:40 pm

amother Salmon wrote:

Why is that a problem ?

It's not necessarily a problem, but it's not an option. They don't have a choice not to use their English name, they have to in many situations.

They have a choice of how to introduce themselves, but they'd have that choice whatever their full name is. Bill Gates is really William Henry Gates III. Everyone just calls him Bill. But had he happened to be Jewish and wasn't interested in William as an alter-ego, his parents could have called him Velvel Henoch Gates and he still could have gone as Bill professionally.

amother

Seafoam

Wed, Sep 06 2023, 1:04 pm

I like that I have a legal name and dh always disliked that he did not have a legal Name since his is hard for some people to say. We gave all our kids English names and some match to the Hebrew and others don’t. This poll and thread is making me nervous that my kids will resent their English names