What’s in a Name? From Meshuggeh to Mainstream

We are living in age when virtually everything has been politicized. Even names. President Trump demands American maps switch to the Gulf of America instead of the Gulf of Mexico. On the micro-level, numerous people send emails with the signature “they” instead of “she/her” or “he/him.” To be sure, this is not completely novel; after all, during Israel’s state formation period, anyone who wanted an official position in the civil service had to change their family name from its foreign origin to something Hebrew sounding (e.g., David Green became David Ben-Gurion).

Can we learn anything from this phenomenon? Yes. My family story – humorous in its own way – can serve as a springboard for an important life lesson.

Upon our engagement in the US in the early 1970s, my wife and I decided to combine our family names. That necessitated going to court for an official name change. To save her the time, I did it in a Boston court a couple of weeks before the wedding, so that from “Lehman” she “automatically” became a Lehman-Wilzig upon our marriage.

There are many reasons why someone would wish to change their name. My wife is an only child and wanted to preserve her family’s heritage (that turned out to be ironic, as I’ll explain below). In my case, it was “ideological”; I had become a fervent feminist.

Being Boston, the courtroom was filled with Irish: the security guard at the entrance, the stenographer, and the policeman standing next to each witness in the courtroom. With my “luck,” though, I got a Jewish judge. I handed him my papers, in which I had to explain and justify my name change.

Every generation has its own way of asserting its identity. One can call it “youthful rebellion” or “generational progress” or some other more or less positive description, but it seems to be a set pattern. What accompanies this, though, is generational pushback as well. The older ones don’t “get it,” mainly because that wasn’t the way “they did it” when growing up and taking over the world.

The judge took my official form, read it with a stolid face, picked up his pen, and while signing off he declaimed out loud the beginning of Tennyson’s famous quote: “Ours not to reason why…”. I wanly smiled, expecting to hear the second part: “ours but to do and die.” Instead, he continued: “but you’re meshuggeh!” I couldn’t help laughing out loud, to the consternation of the Irish cop at my side – probably more perplexed at what the judge said than my guffaw.

So I now find myself in the role of my Jewish judge: “they” instead of “her”?!? How far can this gender fluidity take us? I won’t join this trend, nor do I think it will have much staying power. But then again, my last name is still the compound Lehman-Wilzig – fifty years later.

The point of all this is that “you never know.” Linguistic, cultural, social trends arrive by the dozens. Most come and go (remember bell-bottom pants?); a few arrive and morph (“African American” has supplanted “Black” that originally overtook “Negro” and “Colored”). Several are clear signs of moral progress: feminism – once called “Women’s Liberation” – is most probably permanently here to stay. Conversely, a few are evidence of philosophical backsliding e.g., using “anti-Zionist” as an indirect euphemism for underlying anti-Semitism.

Speaking of which, there’s the reverse case of refusing to change one’s name despite (or to thumb one’s nose at) anti-Semitism. Paul Newman (only half-Jewish, through his father) demonstrably stayed with “Newman” despite his producer Sam Spiegel (himself a Jew!) asking him to change it to something more ethnically neutral.

And then there’s the longer-term name change that we don’t usually think about. The classic case of this? Us! We started out as the Sons of Israel (Bnei Yisrael); then morphed into the Hebrews (Ivrim); from there we split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (Mamlekhot Yisrael ve’Yehudah); and eventually settled on Jews (Yehudim) that lasted for over two millennia until it came time to name the new modern state – not Judea but rather Israel, thereby turning back the name clock 3000 years!

A decade ago, our eldest son hesitatingly came to us with “bad news”: he wanted to change his last name from Lehman-Wilzig to something that sounded Israeli and was simpler to say in Hebrew. The irony, and reason we were actually not upset by this, is that my wife’s father’s original family name was Sprinzeles, that he changed to Lehman in Vienna back in the 1930’s due to anti-Semitism (“Lehman” was a neutral German name). We suggested “Zeevi” – the Hebrew rendition of “little wolf” – what my own family name “Vilchek” means in Polish.

Change is inevitable – linguistic and otherwise. Each of us has the right to be called whatever we want (within limits; New York State will not allow a child to be given the name “Hitler”).
Which brings us back to the Gulf of America. Altering a name that impacts only the person involved is totally legitimate; however, a name change that causes pain to others (emotional or economic), especially if it goes way beyond the individual, is a different kettle of fish.

However, even a personal name change doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to like it; but such a decision has to be respected. That doesn’t mean complete acquiescence but rather a measure of tolerance on our part to what seems at first to be bizarre. In any case, the passage of time and social “convention” will determine whether – and to what extent – the new trend will stick. That’s the name of the game – or the game of the name…