Everything You Didn't Know About Jewish Names

The surprising history behind the names Jews have carried for millennia — and why they still matter today.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

Most people know their name before they know their birthday. It’s the first thing the world gives you.

But names didn’t always work the way they do now. In Jewish history especially, names were never meant to be fixed, inherited, or filed away. They were meant to connect — vessels of memory, theology, lineage, and survival.

Across thousands of years of tribes, peoplehood, nationhood, exile, dispersion, coercion, and renewal, Jewish naming practices have preserved identity. To understand the history of Jewish names is to understand how Jews understood themselves — before God, within community, and against the pressures of surrounding civilizations.

The earliest Jewish names, recorded in the Hebrew Bible, emerge in a world where a person had one name, and that name carried meaning, purpose, and often prophecy. Names were not arbitrary. They reflected circumstances of birth, character, or divine intention.

Adam (אָדָם) derives from adamah (earth), emphasizing humanity’s origin. Chava (Eve) is named as “the mother of all living.” Avraham’s name is changed from Avram to signify his destiny as the father of many nations.

Yaakov’s (Jacob’s) transformation into Yisrael (Israel) occurs after a night of struggle on the banks of the Yabbok River. Alone, vulnerable, and on the brink of reunion with Esav (the brother he deceived and fled), Yaakov is confronted by a mysterious figure described in the Torah only as ish, “a man.” They wrestle until dawn. The encounter is physical, exhausting, and unresolved. Yaakov is injured, struck in the hip, and left limping.

Only afterward does the figure speak. Yaakov is told that his name will no longer be Yaakov, “the heel-grabber,” a name associated with avoidance, cleverness, and survival through retreat. He is renamed Yisrael, “for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” The relationship between God and the Jewish People is defined not by certainty, but by tension argument, moral confrontation, and endurance. Yaakov emerges wounded yet transformed, marked physically and spiritually by the encounter. And that’s where the State of Israel got its name.

Other Biblical Jewish names frequently incorporate the Divine, including El (one of many words for God in Hebrew) and Yah / Yahu (God’s name). For instance, Michael means “One who is like God”; Gabriel means “Man of God”; Ella means “goddess”; Batel means “daughter of God”; Daniel / Danielle means “God is my judge”; Elior means “God is my light”; Yirmiyahu means “The Lord lifts up”; and Yehonatan (Jonathan) and Mattityahu (Matthew) mean “Gift of God.”

In this period, a name was theology compressed into a word. To know someone’s name was to know something essential about their role in the world. When Jews restored Jewish sovereignty in 1948, many changed their first and last names to Hebrew names. In fact, the State of Israel’s founding foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, mandated that all ministry members take a Hebrew surname. The goal was cultural and diplomatic: Israeli representatives should appear rooted in the Hebrew language and Jewish tradition rather than carrying surnames shaped by diaspora languages like Yiddish, German, Russian, Polish, English, or Arabic.

Golda Meir changed her surname from Meyerson to Meir, meaning “illuminate.” Szymon Perski became Shimon Peres. David Grün became David Ben-Gurion.

This was not mere symbolism; it was a statement of sovereignty, identity, and cultural rebirth. Names that had been shaped by exile, diaspora languages, or foreign administrations were replaced with names that connected people to the land, the language, and the history of the Jewish People. In this way, names once imposed from outside were transformed into markers of independence, memory, and belonging — linking each individual not only to family, but to an entire people returned to its homeland.

Today, common Israeli names include Rotem, a resilient flowering shrub that thrives in harsh desert conditions, symbolizing strength, endurance, and adaptability; Omer, which means “sheaf” or a “handful” of grain, referring to an ancient dry measure, specifically one-tenth of an ephah, used for offerings in ancient times; Ortal, which means “light of morning dew,” symbolizing freshness and divine blessing; Shai, which means “gift” or “present,” symbolizing a child as a divine blessing or a precious offering; Adva, which means “small wave” or “ripple,” referring to gentle undulations on water, symbolizing freshness, renewal, and tranquility; and Shaked, which means “almond” and refers to the almond tree, symbolizing watchfulness, promptness, renewal, and new beginnings because it’s the first tree to bloom in spring.

For most of Jewish history, Jews did not use surnames. Instead, identity was established through patronymics; for example, Moshe ben Amram (Moshe, son of Amram) or Rivka bat Betuel (Rivka, daughter of Betuel). This was not just a formal identifier; it was a spiritual and communal reality.

In Judaism, a person’s Hebrew name carries profound religious and communal significance. It is the name used in prayer, in blessings, and at key life-cycle events such as circumcision, bar or bat mitzvah, marriage, and in the recitation of the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing.

Unlike secular or vernacular names, which are largely functional, the Hebrew name is the one that truly matters in Jewish law and ritual. This emphasis on lineage is reinforced through the use of ben or bat, meaning “son of” or “daughter of,” which links each individual to their immediate ancestry rather than to a fixed family surname.

Identity, in this sense, is relational and ethical, rooted in family, community, and covenant. This approach stands in sharp contrast to modern Western naming norms, where a rigid structure (first name plus inherited surname) treats the surname as the primary marker of identity and often renders the first name largely decorative. In Judaism, the Hebrew personal name carries the weight of spiritual, familial, and communal connection, while surnames are historically optional and, until modern times, largely nonexistent.

This practice endured for over 3,000 years and remains central today in religious life, such as in Torah aliyot (honored invitations for Jewish individuals to come up to the synagogue’s raised platform to read from the Torah), ketubot (marriage contracts), and tombstones.

Beyond patronymics, Jews sometimes carried additional identifiers, including trival (Levi, Yehuda); priestly (Kohen, ha-Kohen); and functional (sofer / scribe, dayan / judge). In addition, Jews often used geographic identifiers to distinguish individuals, especially when the same first names were common or when someone had gained renown outside their local community. These identifiers typically referred to the place where a person was born, lived, or studied. For example, Shlomo mi-Troyes, better known by the acronym Rashi, literally means “Shlomo from Troyes,” the French town where he lived and taught in the 11th century.

These were descriptions, not surnames. They identified role, origin, or status, but were not consistently inherited. A son of a scribe might not be a scribe. A family living in one city might move and lose that identifier entirely. This fluidity reflected a Jewish worldview in which identity was lived, not fixed.

As Jews spread across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Europe, Jewish names adapted linguistically while retaining continuity, Hebrew names were translated: Moshe became Moses, Yochanan became Johannes and Jonathan, Miriam became Mary in English and Marie in French, Rivka became Rebecca. Or they were paired with local equivalents: Dov (bear) became Ber, Aryeh (lion) became Leo, Zev (wolf) became Wolf or Wolff, Tzvi (deer) became Hirsch (German for “deer”), Shlomo (peaceful) became Salomon.

Many Jews carried dual names: a sacred Hebrew name used in religious contexts, and a vernacular name used in daily life. This duality allowed Jews to survive culturally while remaining legible to surrounding societies, an early form of identity code-switching.

Many Jews even changed their names entirely to fit into the societies where they lived, often in pursuit of social acceptance, professional advancement, or personal safety. In Europe and later in the United States, Jewish immigrants frequently adopted names that sounded “neutral” or aligned with the dominant culture, leaving behind names that revealed their Jewish heritage.

This was especially common in entertainment, business, or public life, where prejudice or antisemitism could limit opportunities. Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, Roman Kacew became Romain Gary, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler became Hedy Lamarr, Issur Danielovitch became Kirk Douglas, Frances Gumm became Judy Garland, Nathan Birnbaum became George Burns, and Neta-Lee Hershlag became Natalie Portman.

Surprisingly, permanent Jewish surnames are a modern phenomenon, largely appearing between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Crucially, they were often imposed by non-Jewish governments, not adopted organically. Empires required fixed surnames for taxation, military conscription, and property records.

In many cases, Jews were forced to choose (or were assigned) names by officials. This produced several categories of Jewish surnames, including patronymic (Jacobson, Abramov); occupational (Schneider, Melamed); geographic (Berliner, Ashkenazi); and artificial or ornamental (Goldberg, Zahavi). These surnames often reflected external classification rather than internal identity. They were bureaucratic tools, not sacred inheritances.

The modern period introduced unprecedented violence to Jewish names. During the Holocaust, Jews were stripped of names and reduced to numbers. Entire naming traditions were erased alongside communities. In the aftermath, survivors faced a paradox: preserve names associated with annihilation, or change names to escape antisemitism. Both choices carried weight.

With the founding of the modern State of Israel, Zionists turned naming from defensive to declarative. Every name became a statement of identity, memory, and aspiration. This is especially visible in Israel’s streets and public spaces: Almost every street is named after a person (heroes, leaders, thinkers, and cultural figures) rather than a neutral object, a landscape feature, or a number like “2nd Street.”

Hillel Street is named for Hillel the Elder, a revered first-century Jewish sage known for his wisdom, ethics, and founding the House of Hillel, symbolizing Jewish learning and tradition. Dubnov Street is named after the renowned Jewish historian and political theorist Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), a key figure in Jewish nationalism who advocated for Jewish cultural autonomy in the Diaspora. Hovevei Tsiyon Street refers to the Hovevei Zion movement, which was a collection of proto-Zionist organizations that emerged in the early 1880s in Eastern Europe.

There are also plenty of Israeli streets named after non-Jews, such as King George Street, named after King George V of the United Kingdom, honoring the British monarch during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine (1920s-1940s), a time of significant Zionist development. Koresh Street is named after Cyrus the Great (Koresh in Hebrew), the King of Persia who ended the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in the 6th century BCE and allowed them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. Masaryk Street honors Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia, for his strong support of Zionism and the Jewish People, fighting antisemitism (like in the Hilsner Affair¹) and promoting Jewish national rights.

Jewish names, in the end, are more than labels. They carry the echoes of those who came before and the hopes of those yet to come. They have been both armor and lifeline, a way to assert identity under exile, oppression, and erasure, and a way to declare presence in a homeland reborn.

From Yaakov wrestling at the Yabbok River to streets in Jerusalem honoring sages and saviors, names have marked transformation, resilience, and the ongoing dialogue between past and future. Every time a Jewish name is spoken, every time an Israeli street is built, the story continues: a people who refused to vanish, whose history persists as living testimony after living testimony, breathing words that shape who we are and where we came from.

---

1. The Hilsner Affair was a series of antisemitic trials following an accusation against Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish inhabitant of the town of Polná in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary in 1899 and 1900. The affair, an instance of blood libel, achieved widespread media publicity at the time, and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, then professor at Charles University in Prague also got involved in the case to defend Leopold Hilsner.