Family names is an Austrian idea if I remember right. In Judaism you're simply named after the dead and recognized by your father's name. Which is an elegant solution to our profile of exility.

Let's see, if I bring 5 children, and have 4 dead relatives, than the fifth can get a unique name according to the present fashion. Which means that in the next generations a relic of this happy period will be preserved.

Then if I move to a different community, and discover there another 'Yaakov ben Yosef', than there's a fair chance that he's a distant kin of mine, and it will be funny for us to compare us two Yakovs.

And if he's 'Yosef ben Yaakov', than I can turn to him as an uncle or a nephew, rather than as a cousine.

In tragic circumstances more than one name will be mounted on the same child, and lots of children will be produced to memorize the loss in a fruitful way. If the community is too weak to produce enough kids, than some names will be lost for good. Common sense and statistics suggest that distasteful, unique, local names are more likely to perish than biblical names. Thus names which carry with them some of the ugly burden that lead to the tragedy in the first place will be forgotten. Remember our greatest wish towards our enemies is that their names and relics will be forgotten. Well, it slowly happens. Slower than a flea can stride with a white donkey on its back.

And it's all secular, so it gives you a chance to show respect to the community you were brought into without making any sin. Thus I'm called Mordechai, which is actually derived from a pagan Babylonian name (after their idol Marduch), and we remember Esther whose name (just like every star in Astrology) is clearly called after Ishtar.

Then again I'm also called Arie, after my grandmother's other grandfather, Yehuda-Leib.

And Leib means 'life' but also 'lion'. Actually, according to the German-Jewish museum in Berlin, the Levi's Jeans are called after Leib and not after Levi.

So we should call them 'Jeans Haimon' and not 'Jeans Levico'.

In less than two days I could write in Hebrew again! Would you like to join my return party? Mail me if you do.