What Can You Infer From a Name?

J.D. Salinger, the renowned American author, passed away January 27, 2010. Like many other individuals, I am a big fan of A Catcher in the Rye, his most famous work.
Salinger is a literary figure recognized for the sense of timelessness in his writing.

Since I admire him so much as an author, upon seeing him dead I was curious about his earlier life. While I know that only the most general information is well known about famous figures like Salinger, I found some particularly interesting stories on his Jewish background.

Jerome David Salinger– it sounds pretty Jewish, right? Though his father was Jewish, his mother was not. In fact he never even discovered her Christian roots until the time of his bar mitzvah. According to Halakha, Salinger is not truly “Jewish,” even though he had his bar mitzvah, etc. Though there has been so much debate over how Jewishness is defined in the media lately, Salinger’s story of being raised Jewish under the auspices of his mother is seemingly unheard of. Not only did he live until the age of thirteen not knowing it, but also it is almost as if she deliberately tried to convey her fake Jewishness by changing her name from Marie to Miriam.

With this, I found out that both sets of Salinger’s grandparents disapproved of his parent’s marriage. So if they already were upset their son refused to marry someone Jewish, why would she even make the name change? Other social reasons perhaps?

I have encountered a similar situation in my personal life. While my name is Kelly, I am not an Irish redhead like many people would assume. In fact, my family has zero Irish roots. My parents claim they picked it simply because they liked it and it started with a K (used the K from my greatgrandmother Kathleen who passed away before I was alive).

Though I was raised with Judaism, and still to this day follow it, I often feel as if I am prouder with a name like Kelly than if my name was something like Rachel, from the Torah. In a way I like surprising people that name inferences are not always true, just like other bland judgments.

A name really can gain a lot of connotations over the years. However, there is much more to the individual than just his/her name. Simply, look at J.D. Salinger and all of his accomplishments and you can see that he lived a successful life regardless of his possible “false Jewishness.”

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