Reply to Hebrew names for non-Jewish family?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How do the Jewish people who think it’s weird feel when people use Irish names? Think: Sinead or Siobhan Rosenblatt. Ok? What about Sinead or Siobhan Jackson...and the Jacksons are black.[/quote]

PP Jewish person who thinks it's weird when non-Jews use Jewish names: I roll my eyes at all the Irish-named non-Irish children. There are just so many of them that at some point I've come to accept: people just like Irish names. It seems like among a certain group of kids born in the 2000s, Irish names are neutral of cultural association.

Funny enough, I have some kids in my life who were born to parents who are a mix of Portuguese, German, Puerto Rican, and Jewish - and all of those kids have very Irish names. What can you do.

If Jewish names headed in that direction - stripped of cultural association or meaning - I'd be weirded out, I think. But, hey, maybe it would also lead to less anti-semitism - and we'd all take that, nu?

[b]What do Irish people - whether from Ireland or just family history - think pf Irish names being so popular?[/b]
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I think the parents are trendy and roll my eyes at them.  I roll them twice if the birth announcement comes with a pronunciation guide.

But I do love to correctly announce their toddler's name and watch how crestfallen they look.  It's like they see the "no one will know how to pronounce it" warnings not as people saying their kid will be inconvenienced, but rather as proof they'll be the 'smart one' on the playground among other parents - constantly getting to correct people.  IME they hate it when this is taken away.[/quote]

I dunno, this judgment strikes me as stupid. My last name is quintessentially Irish. (Think: O'Reilly, Kelly, Brennan, etc). But my Irish ancestor emigrated to America in the late 1600s, so I am very far away from my Irish roots--so far that I don't identify culturally as Irish American. My paternal grandmother was born in Sweden, so I'm a quarter Swedish, and the rest of my heritage is English, Welsh, Scottish, French. And a smidge of Irish, too.

So it's ok with the world if I name my kid Sinead O'Reilly, even though I don't identify as Irish American. But not ok if I name my kid Dagmar O'Reilly? What if I give my my kid my DH's German last name? Sinead Schmidt? Same mother and father as Sinead O'Reilly, but now you're rolling your eyes? ~shrug~[/quote]

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