ISRAEL: What’s in a name?

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This is the beginning of a radio commercial advertising the government portal, with Israeli actor and singer Gidi Gov complaining that the government has stolen his family name for the government gateway, ending with the obvious suffix ‘.gov’

Of course, the government hasn’t stolen Gov’s name. But past governments did persuade Jews to change theirs -- and not always gently. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was a zealot for regenerating the Hebrew language as well as for forging the image of the ‘New Jew.’

Having changed his original family name from Green, Ben-Gurion ordered diplomats and officers of rank to replace Old-Worldly Eastern European and Middle Eastern names with more modern, Hebrew-sounding ones; committees were established for this and booklets were printed advising people on literal translations and phonetic likenesses.

Even the signers of Israel’s Proclamation of Independence were subject to Ben-Gurion’s obsession. ‘Sign with your Hebrew name,’ he whispered firmly to Herzl Rosenblum, who did -- and entered history by the name of ‘Vardi,’ a translation of ‘Rose.’ He had later regretted this, saying Rosenblum was his real name and that of family members who perished in the Holocaust. Another signer, Zerah Warhaftig, resisted pressure to sign the Hebrew name ‘Amitai’ and remained truthful to his name, meaning just that.

Before the founding of Israel and during its early years, family names — especially those that rang of the old-country that Ben-Gurion and others desperately wanted to leave behind — were of utmost importance. After WWII, Jews everywhere combed lists of survivors and refugees published in registers starting in 1945, praying for familiar names.

‘Those who changed their names have given up hope; they are no longer looking,’ went an Israeli song telling of postwar immigrants.

Many had embraced change, leaving names and the past behind, before the war and after it. Goldberg was translated to Zahavi (from ‘gold’), others retained the sounds like Ariel Sharon (Sheinerman) and Shimon Peres (Persky), and yet others added a Hebrew version to the original. Hyphenated family names are still common among army officers.

Gidi Gov, star of the popular campaign that finally helped authorities offer the Internet as a good alternative to often exasperating Israeli bureaucracy, should actually thank Ben-Gurion. His father, a police officer, had been required to choose a Hebrew name. Daniel Langer chose the new name ‘Gov,’ Hebrew for ‘den,’ to connote the biblical story.

—Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem