The Selection of Jewish Children’s Names- Some Emendations

1. The Portuguese Jewish naming custom

In my paper ‘New Light on the Selection of Jewish Children’s Names’1 I set out the Portuguese Jewish naming custom. As far as I know this is correctly stated in respect of the first and second child of each sex; in this case, the information culled from seventeenth and eighteenth century genealogies was confirmed by contemporary personal testimony. How? ever, I went astray in respect of the third and fourth children, where I relied on genealogies alone, without the confirmation of personal recollection. The examples I gave all relate to the children of younger sons, and further examination of the evidence shows that in an eldest son’s family the practice was different. The third son of an eldest son was not normally given his great-grandfather’s name. For exam? ple, the children of Raphael de Abraham Mendes da Costa (1742-1788),2 of Amsterdam, were named as

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Written by

Edgar R. Samuel

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• Norman Bentwich, 1883-1971*
• Jewish Colonies in Cyprus ? Further Information
• More Letters of Hazan de Sola
• The Selection of Jewish Children’s Names- Some Emendations
• Jews and the English Stage, 1667-1850
• The Community of the Resettlement, 1656-1684: A Social Survey*
• Joseph Gortissos and the War of the Spanish Succession*
• The Literary Career of Joseph Jacobs, 1876-1900*
• The British Press and Zionism in Herzl’s Time (1895-1904)*
• Abraham ben Naphtali Tang-A Precursor of the Anglo-Jewish Haskalah*
• On David Ricardo (1772-1823)*
• Naturalisation of Jews in England
• Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century*
• Jewry of South-West England and some of its Australian Connections*
• The Letters of Israel Abrahams from Egypt and Palestine in 1898*
• Preface