The Weight of a Name: Honoring the Past on Yom HaShoah

For most people, a name is just the beginning. It’s what you answer to, what appears on your documents, what’s stitched into the label on your kindergarten cubby or engraved on your graduation diploma. But for those of us who are children of Holocaust survivors, those of us in the second generation, or “2Gs”—names carry weight far beyond identity. They are markers of memory, loss, continuity, and resilience.

In my family, there was no ceremony around it, no grand explanation. It was just understood. The names we carry belonged to people who had died, no, were murdered, in the Holocaust. There was never a question of naming a child after someone who had survived. Most survivors in our circle were Ashkenazi, and in our tradition, children are named only after the deceased. But beyond that, it was assumed that everyone who had once held these names had perished.

These names were not just chosen; they were assigned by history, by grief, by love, by memory.

I carry the first names of both my grandmothers. My next sister carries their middle names. My youngest sister is named after my mother’s oldest sister and my father’s grandmother. We grew up with these names, but we didn’t ask questions. We didn’t know what to ask. Who were these women? What did they love? What did they dream about? Were they kind? Were they strong? Did I inherit anything from them besides their names? I don’t know. And now, it’s too late to ask.

As I got older, I began to feel the weight of these names. They aren’t just a way to remember the dead—they shape the living. They remind us of what was lost, but also of what survived: the values, the resilience, the hope that somehow made it through. My name links me to a grandmother I never met, yet I carry her name every day, without really knowing who she was. Did she smile like me? Was she strong, afraid, joyful, stubborn? I’ll never know. But her name is mine, and through it, a piece of her lives on.

In many Jewish families formed in the shadow of the Holocaust, naming children after murdered relatives was a way to hold onto the past. It wasn’t talked about much. There was no need. The names spoke for themselves. They said: someone existed. Someone mattered. Someone is remembered.

For a long time, I thought this was normal. Only later did I realize that in other families, names might be chosen for how they sound or what they mean. In mine, names were chosen because they belonged to someone who should still be here. That knowledge gives my name a kind of gravity. It also gives it meaning.

I’ve carried these names my whole life, and yet, when it came time to name my own children, I found the decision wasn’t so simple. Only one of my three children is named for someone who died. My daughter is Ahuva, “loved one.” My middle child bears the names of his two grandfathers—a decision that, in truth, felt less like a choice and more like a peace offering to two devoted grandmothers. My youngest is named Gil-Ami, “joy of my people,” a name chosen with hope and lightness. In these names, I see both continuity and change—an echo of the past, but also space for the present and future.

Now, when I hear the names of my grandparents and aunts—names that once belonged to people who were silenced—I think about how they are still spoken. In roll calls, on forms, at family gatherings. Spoken with love, with sadness, with pride. That is what names can do. They carry history. They keep memory alive. They remind us that we are part of something larger, even if we don’t know the whole story.

In Jewish tradition, names have power. A name can shape a person’s fate, reflect their character, or honor a legacy. For us, names became a form of resistance—against forgetfulness, against erasure. A way to say: They lived. They mattered. And now we carry them forward.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that my name is not just mine. It was given to me, but it was also given up—by someone who had no choice, who never had the chance to grow old, or name a child of their own. I wear their name not only as an honor, but as a promise. To remember. To tell the story. To be the life they were denied.

Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” For a 2G, the answer is: everything. A name is identity, legacy, memory, grief, and love. It is the past etched into the present. It is a gravestone in the absence of a grave.

And it is a quiet vow: I will not forget you.