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The Big Baby-Naming Battle
There’s even a Kohen gene, identified as a marker on the Y chromosome shared by over 90 percent of Kohanim and about 5 percent of all Jewish males. Not to mention the positioning of the kohen’s hands during a priestly blessing, adopted as Mr. Spock’s Vulcan salute by Leonard Nimoy, who was raised an Orthodox Jew.
What’s especially ironic, and to some galling, about the rising popularity of Cohen as a first name is that the people who love it seem to be just about as un-Jewish as you can get. Google “Cohen is my favorite name” and you’ll find family pictures featuring toy guns and rebel flags. On being assured on one name board that using the name Cohen would not necessarily offend Jews, one mom-to-be wrote, “That's great to hear!! We live in a small town in the Midwest and I've never met a Jewish person IRL.”
In Real Life.
“This is exactly why Orthodox Jews stay in Brooklyn, in their own communities, and don’t have anything to do with outsiders,” says my friend Diane, who spent six years in Brooklyn as an Orthodox Jew and now calls herself “a Christian believer who feels guilty on Jewish holidays.” “Once you leave Brooklyn, you go to Hollywood and become a television writer who puts a Jewish character on TV and names him Cohen, and then people in Iowa copy you and those little Cohens grow up and move to New York and marry real Jews and ruin everything.”
Most parents choosing the name Cohen seem unaware of the name’s quintessential Jewishness—or are actively in denial of it. Some posters equate Cohen with such Biblical names as Sarah and David or choose to identify it with the Irish Cohan or Coen, a patronymic related to Coyne; the Scottish Cowen or Cowan; the Dutch Koen or Coen, which means "daring,” and the German Kohn, a short form of Konrad.
“You needn't feel guilty about using Cohen, because the name has been percieved [sic] in so many different ways by many different faiths,” writes one online Cohen-lover to another, “much like the Bible itself.”
“All these hillbillies are sitting around drinking their Mountain Dew and eating their Ho Hos and naming their babies Cohen,” says Anne, a New York teacher who hasn’t been to temple since her bat mitzvah but finds the use of Cohen to be akin to “taking a name in vain.” “They’re ignorant that they’re stealing a sacred name from a religion to which they don’t belong, and even if they find out, they don’t care who it offends.”
But the real reason people love the name Cohen is not because of any religious connection or lack thereof, but because they see it as a “unique” spin on the two-syllable, n-ending, surname-y names so popular for boys today: Colton, Rohan, Logan. One online poll pitted Cohen against Coby (Cohen won, 67 percent to 33 percent), while another debated the merits of Cohen Ray versus Desmond Reeve. And a downmarket baby-name site lists Cohen as an American form of Cody.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Amateur Hour at the White House
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Going Rogue: The Index
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
Gender-Bending Baby Names
Pamela Redmond Satran is a developer of the baby-naming site nameberry.com and the coauthor of 10 books on names, including Beyond Ava & Aiden, due out next month.
Top 20 Baby Names of 2008
Pamela Redmond Satran is a developer of the baby-naming site nameberry.com and the coauthor of 10 books on names, including Beyond Ava & Aiden, due out next month.
How the Palin Family Chooses Those Names
Pamela Redmond Satran is a developer of the baby-naming site nameberry.com and the coauthor of 10 books on names, including Beyond Ava & Aiden, due out next month.
I hope all those asses at least get those Cohen kids circumcised.
1. Why any non-Jewish person would want to name their child Cohen, I don't know. But then, I get nausea when I hear most people's ideas for baby names these days. However, having said that...
2. Even if we get past the fact that there are already tons of non-Jews with the last name Cohen, and the fact that only a small percentage of Jews surnamed Cohen are actually Kohanim, using the name Cohen for a non-Jewish child is NOT STEALING. It's goofy, but it's not stealing. This is an insane accusation. Religious communities don't get a trademark on sounds. Some people badly want to be offended, I guess.
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It's a clueless choice, and reminds me of being invited to an "ecumenical" seder where participants sang "Old Rugged Cross." But nobody gets to patent a name or a ritual in our melting pot of a country.
Names with religious meanings do tend to spark controversy, don't they? Before it was Cohen, I heard lots of nasty comments about Nevaeh.
I can't relate to the frustration over Cohen, but I'll admit that, as a Catholic, I find Trinity wildly inappropriate. But it wouldn't bias me against the parents or the child wearing the name - and I can see that some parents might find the religious meaning appealing.
Just wait until all the trendy variations come out, like they did with the name Aiden 2-4 years ago: Jayden, Cayden, Ayedin...you name it, it's been done.
As someone from an Orthodox Jewish background, I'm not insulted by this at all. It's actually quite flattering. I think it's funny. I would, however, object to people changing their SURNAME to Cohen when they are not actual Kohanim. That would make a greater difference.
Boy, this is really going to spoil the gene pool, when all these Cohens start intermarrying with the real thing! .
does the phrase "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ring a bell? I would think that in this day and age, to have someone choose a name from a culture other than their own would be a good thing.
I personally don't get the idea of naming your kid something just because you like the name, and I especially don't get naming your kid something trendy and faddish, to boot. We all have so many relatives and ancestors who came before us and put us where we are today, why not honor them and keep their names in your family?
What's wrong with Stephen, John, Robert, William, Jack, or Fred? What the hell is Jayden or Caleb or Colton except a dumb fad that disconnects the kid from his lineage? And why last names as first names?
Names mean things - everyone laughs at the old joke about the inner-city mom naming her newborn daughter "Vagina" yet no of these stupid parents seem to get that other names have meanings, too, that may or may not be appropriate for a child.
My two boys are named after their parents' respective paternal grandfathers (Jack and Roy) and I wouldn't have it any other way.
if I may respectfully take exception to the classification of names as "dumb fad"... FYI
The boy's name Jayden \ja(y)-den\, also used as girl's name Jayden, is a variant of Jadon (Hebrew), and the meaning of Jayden is "Jehovah has heard".
The boy's name Colton \c(o)-lton, col-ton\ is pronounced KOHL-ton. It is of Old English origin, and its meaning is "swarthy person; coal town or settlement".
Caleb \c(a)-leb\ is pronounced KAY-leb. It is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "dog". Biblical: Caleb, a companion of Moses and Joshua, was noted for his astute powers of observation and fearlessness in the face of overwhelming odds; his devotion to God is symbolized by the "dog" in some traditions. The name was popular among the Puritans, and was introduced by them to America.
In essence, no less valid or less historically meaningful than Jack or Roy...
I think the sound and meaning of a name are important (and I like heritage too).
And I all but break out and laugh when I think of the day when I see "Barbie" and "Tiffany" etc... in the nursing home.
But come on... in this day and age, there are more important things then this article.
I love the irony! Illiterate bible-thumping, evangelical, anti-Semites name their kids Cohen, only to have their ilk mistake them for being Jewish, beat them up and taunt them mercilessly. Suh-weet revenge!
The last name Cohan, is a common Irish last name. To say that any person or religion should and could be offended by the naming of a baby is preposterous. While I personally would not name my children some of the names that are being chosen by celebrities and 'persons of high caste,' I would surely think that naming a child in honor of someone of the priestly sect of the Jewish faith would be pleasing and most assuredly an honor.
Assimilation always has a price.
If you're surprised about this, you haven't hung around many Jews. And I don't mean this badly -- I just happened to go to a very Jewish university and have plenty of conservative Jewish friends. I don't know, if you've got a bloodline that has survived 3000 years of all sorts of exclusions and massacres and so forth, you might just feel a little protective of it...
But here's a general rule: if you don't know what your kid's name means, you probably shouldn't saddle your kid with it. I think that's a fairly sensible rule. Maybe names don't have significance anymore, but there are cultures in which they do, and you don't have to go very far back in Jewish cultural traditions to find folktales of people whose names represent their fate, such as a little boy who is miraculously saved from the Cossocks and adopted by Gentiles, but doesn't know who he is until he hears his name, Chaim -- "life" -- being uttered. Of course a name should be aesthetically pleasing to the parents, but ultimately, it seems kind of unfair to send a kid out into the world with a name that sounds nice but means nothing. Not that this has stopped many people...
I find baby-naming fascinating. My son's name is David, and he's usually the only David in his class. When I was growing up in the 60s, I usually had one or two Davids in my class every year. My oldest daughter is named Barbara (after my mother), and I remember once when I was at a playground, calling Barb, a woman approached me and said, "What an unusual name!" Not in the 1920s, I thought. There were a lot of Barbaras then!
I think this whole Cohen issue is interesting, but not troubling (I'm not Jewish, though, so maybe I'm being insensitive). I think it's really a complement-the implication being that giving people the impression that you're Jewish is cool. If you think about it, you never hear of WASPs giving their children Muslim names.(Though I know African Americans do, and I think some of the Arabic girl's names are pretty).
If people name their kids Cohen without considering the link to Judaism, then it's not a Jewish name. Clearly it's based on a tv character. Most hot baby names are based on tv stars or pop singers. It's kind of sad.
Hey, it's not like these people stole miles of land and half of Jerusalem. Let's keep things in perspective, people.
In a conversation about baby names, really? come on.
I looked to my family for baby names only to discover 4 generations of Ebeneezers. There's also many a Harvey (I like Harvey, but the in laws would plotz since there's an evil Harvey on their side). Oh, there is also too many Lendalls.
So I got creative, using a bit here and here to update the names yet still call them family names.
Since this is the USA, where anyone can be anything, go, enjoy wee Cone, Cohen, Conan; it will transform into a girl's name soon enough.
He who takes offense when none is intended is a fool. He who takes offense when offense is intended is even more foolish. Lighten up, EVERYBODY!!!!! And have a fun day.
Baby naming used to be such a personal thing. Not being Jewish, I do not understand what all the uproar is about. While I believe this world could do with more sensitivity among us, we have to be careful we're not trying to force our individual beliefs onto each other.
As a school teacher, naming children was difficult. Both of my children have unique names that have meaning and significance to my husband and I. We chose not to reveal either of their names until each was born.
I guess if you're going to ask for opinions, particularly on an internet message board, be ready for anything.
Gee. What's going to be next? Shlomo? Lipshitz?
LOL
I know that non-Hispanic Christians (in my neck of the woods) had to get used to the idea of naming a child "Jesus", and I'm sure some of the older folks felt it at least inappropriate if not sacrilegious
but we live in a multicultural society...other groups have other rules....I think that's what's great about America
and lots of people, know, pick names that just "sound nice"
most Americans don't even think of their names as having a literal meaning...well...at least not after the baby name books are put away
Cohen-deleeza?
Thank you.
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