Reply to Can I name my Jewish daughter Mary?

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Reply to "Can I name my Jewish daughter Mary?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ask your rabbi, but my very Jewish great grandmother was a Mary. Mary is just an English version of Miriam.

If I put "Mary Cohen" into Ancestry.com, I see lots of Mary Cohens born in Russia and Poland. If about 1 percent of American Jews have the surname Cohen, there must be at least a few hundred American Jewish women named Mary in the Ancestry.com database.[/quote]

[b]That an immigrant changes Miriam Cohen to Mary Cohen in 1912 doesn’t really have relevance.[/b] Besides, this isn’t an argument about whether there’s ever been a Jewish Mary; but rather the contemporary meaning and impact. Plenty (probably large majority) of Jews today would find it uncomfortable and inadvisable. As many have stated here. [/quote]

+1.  Immigrants changed their names (first and last) to try to blend in and make assimilation easier.  Others had names changed for them by immigration officials who Anglicized names of arriving immigrants.

Now that hiding one's ethnic background is less common (although it still occurs in Hollywood and elsewhere) historical examples have much less relevance.[/quote]

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