names are a funny thing. some people in my family think that david is an american name, not hebrew.
as to the couple in the op that ran the store. in russia there are names that are popular across the board christian or jewish, and some you would not use if you were christian or jewish. david falls into the not used if you weren’t jewish. interestingly enough a name that is popular across the board here in the states is never used in russia; joshua. it doesn’t work well there, just like boris and igor don’t work well here.
their insistance that he must be jewish i would put down as they didn’t know how to get out of the situation they were in, so rather than say :" oh isn’t that interesting", they would just insist that they were right. sometimes elderly people are like teenagers they are always right no matter what.
So David Duke is Jewish? I suppose the KKK will be pissed when they find out…
David is one of the “standard” Bible names, sufficiently common to be pretty much a part of English (and, in various forms, other European) culture for centuries. (Example: David I, King of Scotland, 1124-1153.)
Sure, it’s originally Jewish… but I would no more expect any given David to be Jewish than I would expect people to think that I was Greek, based on the origins of my first name. (Come to think of it: Stephen, King of England, 1135-1154.)
Of course, all these things vary according to the culture you’re brought up in…
David Koresh wasn’t his original name. He was born Vernon Howell and didn’t become Koresh until he was with the Branch-Davidians.
Every “Vernon” I ever knew was involved in deviant cult-sex.
Hmmmm
Why would he? Carlos is a spanish name. Now if he was called “Carlo”…
Rilchiam, I agree with the other posters who believe that the shopkeepers probably did not mean any harm (though of course there’s always the slight possibility that they don’t like Jews.) Since they’re older, and from another country to boot, they have different ways of dealing with people. In the small village in which I lived in Switzerland, a shopkeeper would think nothing of asking “Winkelried, eh? Are you related to Winkelried at the third farm on the road to the dam?” and try in other ways to track down the family tree. Instead of giving them the silent treatment, I would have explained that David is a common name in english-speaking christian countries (e.g. David Copperfield).
Okay, I dig. I should have remembered the Italian-American community my dad’s family lived in, the one where someone once asked, “How does a Catholic girl get red hair?” To which I answered “How do you know I’m not Irish?”
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*Originally posted by Rilchiam *
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Actually, I’m in Shanghai but from Norcal. Way up in the hicks new Yuba City, Sacto and SF.
I’ve always thought of David as a Jewish name.
I know this is going to sound silly, but I think of it as a Jewish name except in application. I don’t assume to know someone’s religion by their name.
Oh, and I am Jewish. At least quasi-Jewish. I do have a David in my family… he’s my uncle’s son, and Christian. 