A Rosen by Any Other Name: Hebraization of Surnames 

“What’s in a name?” – Shakespeare asked, claiming that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But for the Zionist movement, a Rosen by the Hebrew name of Vardi definitely smells sweeter.

From its inception, the Zionist movement presented its agenda as bringing about a revolution and renaissance of all aspects of Jewish life, religion and culture. Not only was the movement about the creation of a reborn Jewish national homeland and the rebirth of the Hebrew language, but also about the creation of a “new Jew” who would throw off the trappings of the Diaspora to live in that homeland.

An integral part of the creation of this new Jew was the Hebraization of “Galut” surnames, which, according to Gershom Martin of the Weizmann Institute in his paper, “Some Preliminary Notes of Israeli Family Names,” some extremists even regarded as “slave” names.

“The aim of Zionism was to the solve the problem of anti-Semitism,” explains Prof. Oz Almog, a professor of sociology at the University of Haifa and the author of “The Sabra – The Creation of the New Jew.” “The idea was to normalize the Jewish people by creating a new Jew. Jews in the Diaspora generally did not own or work land. Therefore, in Israel they would own and work the land. A Hebrew surname was a way of building a new Israeli identity – a way of saying this is my language, my independence, my identity. Being Jewish was not enough. And, in truth, there was something of an anti-religious element in the creation of the new Jew. More traditional and religious Jews rarely Hebraized their names.”

The idea of Hebraizing surnames began as early as the First Aliyah in the 1880’s. An early example is Eliezer Perlman, who became Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the reborn Hebrew language. But the trend was far from a mass movement and only a few individuals chose to exchange their Diaspora surnames for new Hebrew ones.

Prof. Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv University in his paper on, “The Hebraization of Surnames in Eretz Israel as a Cultural Translation” makes the interesting point that when Zionists started changing their names in the 19th century, there was no real existing Hebrew culture. In most cases where people immigrate to another land and decide to cast off their old identity, they have an existing culture in which to assimilate. In the case of the early Zionists, they had to create a new culture and one of the necessary components was the taking of Hebrew surnames.

The switch to Hebrew surnames was spearheaded by the leaders of the Zionist Movement, especially David Ben-Gurion (Gruen). So Schneor Zalman Rubashov became Shazar, Yitzhak Shimshelevitz became Ben-Zvi and Golda Meyerson became Meir. Interestingly, leaders of the right wing within the Zionist Movement, such as Menachem Begin and Joseph Klausner, did not change their names. Neither did Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israel government pushed through a law making it mandatory for senior IDF officers and emissaries going abroad (both diplomats and others) to have Hebrew surnames.

A letter to Commentary Magazine in 1956 highlights some of the opposition to mandatory surname change. “The people of Israel have every right to change their names. In fact, when done voluntarily, it is a fine gesture of solidarity with the new Israel that enriches the treasure of Jewish patronymics. But it should be left to the individual… to decide whether or not a Diaspora name evokes ‘painful associations”…. Let those who cherish the historical associations in their names keep them and let others change as they see fit. A name is too personal a matter to be tampered with by outsiders, be they Jewish on non-Jewish.”

Those changing their names were mostly Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern and Central Europe. They saw their names as negatively connected to the Diaspora. The fact that these Jews were more open to changing their surnames than Mizrahi Jews may be connected in the way in which Ashkenazi Jews acquired their surnames, as well as the more traditional orientation of Mizrahi Jews. Traditionally, Jews were known by Hebrew patronymic names -- ben or bat with the father’s name -- as still the custom today in religious life. Permanent family surnames as we know them gained popularity among Sephardic Jews in Iberia as early as the 10th or 11th centuries CE. But in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, these names did not become common until much later and in a good number of cases were imposed by the non-Jewish authorities.

While non-Jewish Poles had surnames by the 1700’s, in some areas even earlier, Jews living in the Commonwealth of Poland (which at that time included modern-day Lithuania, the western Ukraine and Belarus) did not take surnames until required to do so by the authorities in the 1800’s, so the emotional connections to the names were often weak. Many of these names were of German, Yiddish or Polish origin or were connected to cities in the Diaspora.

But the Zionists were really not making such a break with Jewish tradition as they may have thought. Changing names has not been an unusual occurrence in Jewish history. The Patriarchs changed their names to reflect spiritual changes – Avram to Avraham, Jacob to Israel. In the Middle Ages, a person who was dangerously ill would change his name in the hope of baffling the Angel of Death. This custom is mentioned in the Talmud and by Yehuda Hasid. One of the most common names adopted was Chaim. The custom continues today. Recently, during the Gaza Operation Cast Lead, the father of a seriously wounded Israeli soldier told Israeli television that he had added the name Chaim to the name of his son in hopes of his recovery.

Hebraization generally took one of several forms. Some chose to make a direct translation of the Diaspora name into Hebrew – such as Rosen to Vardi or Steinberg to Hareven. Others simply took the Diaspora patronym and turned it into Hebrew – such as Davidson to Ben-David or Wolfson to Ben-Zeev. Many chose names with phonetic similarities – Berlin to Bar-Ilan or Halperin to Harel. Another option was taking a patronym derived from one’s father’s Hebrew name – Ben-David or Ben-Chaim. Yet another option was taking a completely new name that was symbolic in meaning to the bearer – Dinur, which in Aramaic means “from the fire”, was adopted by some Holocaust survivors, or Nir, which in Hebrew means “ploughed field,” was taken by farming pioneers.

Sometimes the impetus to Hebraize a surname stemmed from its being awkward to pronounce or spell in Hebrew, or bizarre sounding. But Prof. Almog notes that today, new immigrants from Russia or the Ukraine with seemingly unpronounceable names rarely change them. “There is a whole different attitude today, one of, ‘who are you to tell me to change my name?’” he notes.

Even among ardent Zionists, those with surnames carrying religious significance generally did not change them -- Cohen, Katz, Levi, Chazan, Melamed, Dayan, etc. Also those with surnames with “yichus” (illustrious lineage) did not usually Hebraize -- Rothschild, Soloveitchik, Shaltiel.

Zvi Mazel, retired former Israeli ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden, changed his surname from Meizels when he joined the Foreign Ministry in the early 1960s. Born in Bnei Brak, Mazel readily admits that, if he hadn’t been in the Foreign Ministry, he would not have changed by name. “I did not feel it was important to have a Hebrew surname,” he said, “But there were others who wanted to show that they are living in a reborn nation. I changed my surname because we had to drop our Galut names before we could go abroad. This policy was stopped about a decade ago and there have even been some diplomats who have gone back to their Galut names or added them to their Hebrew surnames.”

Retired Jerusalem attorney Moshe Argov was born in Poland and came to Israel as a toddler with his parents in 1934. The family name was Grabie. After fighting as a teenager in the War of Independence, Argov decided to Hebraize his surname. “At the beginning of the 1950s, there was a movement towards taking Hebrew surnames. Generally, people already had Hebrew first names. I wanted to change my name when I began my law studies at the Hebrew University in 1950. Grabie was hard to write in Hebrew and people were always misspelling and mispronouncing it. Plus, we were all involved in building a new Israel and a new Israeli. I wanted to make the name change together with my parents, but they kept delaying doing so. Finally, they said they didn’t want to. They wanted to honor my grandparents. The Holocaust was also a factor in their decision. They were still hopeful that someone from the family had survived in Poland. What if that person came to Israel looking for them and they had changed their surname? How would he or she find them if they had a new name? So in 1954, I changed my name on my own. I wanted to do it before the end of my studies so my diploma would have my new Hebrew surname. I chose the name Argov because it uses some of the same letters. That was more than 54 years ago and I have never had any regrets.”

After 60 years of independence, Israel has come a long way in creating an “Israeli” culture and in establishing the primacy of the Hebrew language in the country. Ironically, these successes of Zionism have resulted in Israelis today being far more tolerant of their Diaspora roots and have led to a decline in the pressure once felt to Hebraize surnames.

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