It seems like when (older) men have the names Ira, Sidney, Sheldon, or Morris (to name just a few,) they tend to be Jewish. Obviously this is a generalization, and obviously there are non-Jews with these names, but there are so many Jews with the above first names that there is definitely a stereotype of those names being Jewish.
Unlike other common Jewish forenames derived from Hebrew, like Isaac, Jacob, Abraham, or Chaim (which was anglicized to Hyman or Hymie,) , those Jewish names above seem to have English roots.
Being a history major with a minor in Jewish Studies, I read a lot of historical documents containing Jewish names. What I find is that frequently, in America, in the 1800s and early 1900s, most Jewish men had Biblical-derived names. There were a lot of Abes and Jakes and Shmuels (Samuels) and Moishes (Moses) and so on and so forth. Many of these people were immigrants.
It seems like the second and third generations gave their kids Anglo-Saxon names, to assimilate more into the general population. This is understandable and there’s nothing that extraordinary about it. However, why the hell did they like Morris and Sidney and Sheldon so much?
Was it that they were trying to find Anglo-Saxon surnames that were not derived from the Christian New Testament? This would obviously rule out Chris, Luke, Mark and Paul and other Apostle names. There are a lot of Jewish Marks and Pauls NOW but not many 60 and 70 year old Jewish men with those names.
Traditionally, Jews have named their children after (deceased) relatives. But Jews in America have usually wanted to give their children American-sounding names, rather than Hebrew or Russian-sounding names.
A common solution has been to pick American names that either sound like the original Russian/Hebrew name, or just names that start with the same consonants/diphtongs.
So, if a Jewish family in Brooklyn wanted to honor Uncle their late Shlomo, they might name their son Sheldon. If they wanted to honor Grandpa Moshe, they might name their son Morris. If they wanted to honor old Uncle Itzakh, they might name the boy Irving ir Ira. Or if they wanted to honor Uncle Chaim, they might name their son Hyman or Herman.
It brinbgs to mind a cartoon I say years ago- it showed a Space Age Jewish couple holding a new baby, saying “We’re naming him Shmuel after his Grandpa Scott.”
Names are contagious within a particular community or culture. An iconoclastic parent decides to name their child an unusual name and before you know it, everybody and their mama in that culture has that name.
The names you mentioned are stereotypically Jewish for the same reason “Ashleigh” and “Brandon” are stereotypically suburban WASP, “Temika” and “Darnell” are stereotypically black, “Marie” and “Anthony” are stereotypically Italian, and “Darlene” and “Abner Ray” are stereotypically rural WASP. People get name ideas from their friends, families,neighbors, and personal heros–all folks who tend to share the same culture or social background. It may also be that people select certain names (or avoid certain names) as a way of deliberately emphasizing their belonging to a particular culture, thereby enforcing the stereotype.
The names you mentioned strike me as being more common back in the day. “Sidney”, as a male’s name, seems to be (to me) more Baby Boomerish than Generation X, for instance. And I’m betting that those names are more common in areas like NYC, where there are lots of Jewish folk, compared to somewhere else where the Jewish community is smaller and not as culturally close-knit.
It’s because names like “Sheldon” or “Ira” or “Stanley” were pure WASP names. If they named their kid “John” or “Christopher” or something, anybody could name their kid that, but only a WASP would name their kid “Irving”.
Meaning that they come specifically from the cultures of the Anglo-Saxon people and were not adaptations of Biblical names (which were appropriated by every culture and therefore not “pure.”) Right?
What I think he’s saying - because I was going to say something similar - is tha they were respectable names, names with status. And kids who had them wouldn’t be discriminated against for being obviously Jewish. They’re not popular names anymore, but if they’re kept alive at all, I imagine it’s mostly by Jewish naming traditions.
From "What to Name Your Jewish Baby - Anita Diamant 1989
And of course Jewish names often became like Jewish food: taken in modified forms from surrounding cultures and preserved within the Jewish world long after it had lost its popularity in its culture of origin.
Note also that these names which Jews of (about) 1920 through 1950 would give to their children, like Irving, Herman, Sidney, or Morris, which had before 1920 been thought of as WASP names, were so commonly used for Jewish children that WASP parents would no longer used these names for their own children because the names now sounded too Jewish. Then Jewish parents, realizing that only Jewish children were now using these names, also quit using them for their children. This is why these names began to be much less used after about 1950.
Latinos do it too, and not only in the US - giving boys ‘English’ sounding names like Nelson and Wilson as well as many other US presidential surnames - Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Kennedy. I’ve even come across one or two Irvings, for that matter. You also get ordinary English names like William, Richard, Rosemary, Elizabeth and Stephanie, in English, even though there are Spanish versions of all these names - Guillermo, Ricardo, Rosa Maria, Isabel and Estefania.
Minor hijack here: where does the name Shlomo come from? I don’t recall any Shlomos from the Old Testament, but it seems to be a very popular Jewish name.
I seem to notice Marc (with a c) used more often by Jews than by non-Jews. I wonder if the relative popularity of Marc, as against Mark, might be a subtle way to show non-acknowledgment of the New Testament.
Basically. The problem wasn’t that the name “Christopher”, for example, had a Christian connotation, though. It’s more like, If I’m going to go out of my way to give my kid a name that hides the fact he’s Jewish, it’s not going to be a name that somebody might mistake for Italian or Irish or something.
I have a non-Jewish grandfather and a Jewish grandfather, it amuses me that the non-Jewish grandfather was Isaac David and the Jewish one was Fred (actually, he was Fritz Johannes, but Fred was what my grandmother called him).
The other respondents failed to note that this was one of the motivations, if not the only one. My father’s Hebrew name was either Mordecai or Mattis (nobody alive today is sure) but that was translated into Morton. Alternatives might have been Mark or Michael or Matthew or Morris, I suppose. The first three sound too much like Christian names.
I am guessing that Chaim went to Hyman, Tzvi might have gone to Sidney, Shlomo certainly went to Sol. Shmuel (Samuel) went to Sam; some Biblical names held up ok. I lucked out; my name is Joe. Good, safe, important Biblical name. yay!
Somewhere I have this wonderful family tree spoof. The top has names like Mattis and Sonia. The next level is Morton, Sheldon, Iris, etc. The level after that is Mark, Harry, Dan, and the newest level is Joshua, Avrom, Nathan! ;j
My grandparents were Lithuanian and Polish. This exact thing happened to them when they arrived in South Africa.
Although it is not the answer to the OP’s question specifically about names like Irving, Morris, and Sidney, it did exactly happen as others have pointed out.
My grandmother’s name was Nachama, she took Naomi as a kid in South Africa and nobody calls her different.
Her sister’s name I think is Salimka, but she has always been known as Sally. In fact, even though I have seen her nearly every week for my whole life, I don’t know exactly what her born name was.
My grandfather was Zalman Ber, but took Z. Bernard, and was always known as Ben (although this is a bit odd because he was never Binyamin). His brother is Gershon but is known to us as Gus although his pet name is Gerry (to his wife).
Also, I know two Maishes (Yiddish diminutive of Moshe) who have become Morris.
This happens to last names too. My last name dropped a -ski. My grandmother’s unpronounceable last name went to something totally different. And of course there are all of those attributed cases of names being reassigned at immigration entrance points by pointing to names at random out of the New York phonebook…