another interesting piece on the meaning of names:
INTRODUCTION TO THE CULTURE OF JEWISH NAMES
The people of Israel has always had a special relationship with the concept of "name", not by chance that the first great "book of onomastics" of Western history is undoubtedly the Bible, where each character is characterized by its name, as fundamental to understanding the deeper meaning of the biblical narrative.
In at least two cases, the fate of the character is symbolized by a change of name: Abraham, who becomes Avram to Avraham, and the addition of the H becomes a worshiper of idols in the father of the Jewish people, and Jacob, whose name is changed after a fight night with a divine messenger in Israel, "one who wrestled with the Lord." We will see better. For now, suffice it to say that the biblical stories are understandable only if one takes into account the symbolic value of the names of various characters, and this is the reason why the Bible is full of genealogies, lists of names apparently meaningless, redundant quotes lost people in the night time. What matters, beyond the faintest clues Data circumstances, you name it, forever, that still resonates today charged with symbolic meaning is not entirely revealed.
It 's interesting to note that to describe God, the Jews use the word "HaShem", which literally means "the Name."
God for the Jews is not a force, a person, be otherworldly, is first and foremost "Name", name unsaid, unknown, and every attempt to define it is not that the definition and partial understanding of this totality. However, Jewish tradition has produced a series of 72 divine names, they use the Kabbalists and containing a deep symbolism.
While we're on the parties to the Kabbalah, the esoteric tradition Hebrew gematria to mention: the technique of interpreting the names through the symbolic meaning attributed to the numerical individual letters that make up . The Bible is read by Kabbalists in this way, and the tradition has left a profound way of understanding the culture onomastics by the people of Israel.
For millennia the Jewish people have used and handed down the biggest names in the Bible, completed in the name-day footage of the people of the diaspora, from local names, names of the land of Israel, and names of concepts repeated in the scriptures and the Talmud, the body of books he has collected over time as a rabbinical interpretation of sacred texts.
But in a century Apart from the Jewish onomastics has completely transformed, renewed, an accomplice of the most significant events that the Jewish people have ever lived: the return to Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel after 2,000 years of exile.
The Zionist pioneers who came from Eastern Europe to Palestine in recent years of the nineteenth century and throughout the following century were animated by the desire to revive the Hebrew language and get rid of the weight and the memory of 2000 years of persecution and exile, a key element was the creation of a new onomastics, the "new names" by which Israelis call the people of the new, as if to distinguish by name the sign of the children, masters of their land by fathers, persecuted in the land of others.
is how the new modern Israeli onomastics, which creates names inspired by the nature of the land of Zion, its flowers, its products, the cycle of seasons, natural phenomena, places, words used, hopes, suggestions , memories.
60% of Israelis and 80% of Israel today have names like this, we might call "postbiblici" or "Jewish contemporaries."
The most common practice is to give a modern name followed by a second biblical name, to continue the tradition. Remain, although increasingly rare contemporary use, traces of Yiddish names, names borrowed Germanic and Slavic languages \u200b\u200bfrom which were used by the Jews of the diaspora of Eastern Europe.
This section will be divided into two sections carried out simultaneously: an onomastic Bible, its characters and the symbolism of their names, the other will deal with contemporary Jewish names, their history and distribution.
And, wanting from the beginning, starting with two primordial forces symbolic, what philosophy calls "energy" and "matter" theology "soul" and "body" and that in the Bible are explained by the first two names appear: ADAM-earth, matter, and CHAVE-life force, energy. In short, Adam and Eve. With two names, expresses all the biblical narrative. Not to mention a third name which is part of modern TRADITION, but that comes straight from the first chapter of Genesis: "And the Lord said-that-be light ..." OR, light, unisex name, and origin of dozens of names related to it, demonstrating how the new onomastics still sinking its roots in the same historical and cultural humus.
taken from
The Hebrew names and onomastics of the Bible
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