What's in a Name?

Sephardim wear our names like a badge of honor. They speak, not only of our ancestry, but of our pedigree, as well. Surnames like Abulafia, Harosh, and Sasson carry with them the weight of religious leadership. Family names like Basri, Babli, and Masri tell the stories of our origins in the Diaspora. Others like Qatan and Tamar give insight into the  features and fortunes of those who laid a path for us.

Not unlike the Mexican decendants of Spains glory, we carry with us to the Torah, a series of names which weave a tapestry of our personal journey into this world. In my Ashkenazik synagogue, the Gabbai rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath as he calls me up, David Moshe ben Wiseman Shaul Chacham Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Eliezer lived some one hundred and fifty years ago, and though I know nothing of him, his honorary title, Chacham, elevated him and elevates the rest of us to aspire to something more. To do right by him and his legacy.

The same is true for my surname: Horesh. I wear it proudly. My Grandmother, my father, my aunts and uncles; they all instilled in me a sense of honor and grace; a respect for their journey and the traditions they held dearly to. My desire to be a part of their story, and true to it, kept me "on the derech" (connected to Jewish tradition) when it certainly would be have been easier to walk away. A need to understand their story, in order to convey it my children, led to genealogy and to a look into times and places so different from my own.

Our earliest ancestor was a man by the name of Yosef Horesh. He seems to have arrived in Baghdad sometime around the turn of the 18th Century. Based on oral tradition, we "know" that he was of Spanish decent, that he came from an area under Viennies authority, and that he traveled to Salonika before finally settling in his new home. Who traveled with him and what precipitated his migration is all conjecture and historical fiction.

The word Horesh has two meanings. The noun form means a small grove of trees and has its roots in the Biblical stories of David Hamelech (King David). The verb form means to plow, as in farming. This could hint that our earliest "named" ancestors were farmers, a great change from the savvy businessmen they became in Iraq. The problem is that the only place in Europe where the name Horesh is found today is in Czech and Hungary, and those families are Christian.

There are a few documents that suggest that the family name might have originally been Hirsh. In German/Yiddish, the word hirsh means a deer. Perhaps, Horesh grew out of an Arabization of the German word, Hirsh becomes Her'esh which becomes Horesh. That might be the case except that Yosef would have almost certainly written in Hebrew and the word 'hirsh' would be written הירש while Horesh would be written חוֹרשׁ. They are close, but not close enough, and so we stick with Horesh.

But where did Horesh come from? A cousin in Israel suggested that being of Sephardic, rather than Mizrachi decent, the roots of the name would most likely have been in Spain. Playing with Soundex, a genealogical tool which drops vowelization and concentrates and variations in consonant sounds across regions, languages and dialects, he came up with with Juarez. In this scenario Spanish "Jua" (pronounced 'HWa") became "Ha" and the 'ez" became a hard "eszh" (like a buzzing sound made through clenched teeth), and so was transformed into Haresch. This in an intriguiging idea, but one which runs is somewhat dispelled by the Hebrew as well, since Haresch would be written הרש rather the Horesh-חורש.

[A quick note about Hebrew here. In the Hebrew alphabet, there are no vowels and so words are a series consonant sounds. When there is a question about a word, its specific identity and pronounciation is determined from context. Additionally, certain letters, including the Yod (י) and Waw/Vav (ו), are often optional in cases where they make a vowel-like sound. Keeping that in mind, Hirsh could actually be written 'הרש' making it identical to the derivative of Juarez - 'הרש.']

Having reached an impasse, we accepted that perhaps there was no answer to the great Horesh mystery. Like so many other genealogist we would have to accept that that we wouldn't know. Then, at the Rabbi's Shabbat lunch table late last year, a romantic answer came to light. "It's quite simple," the other guest said emphatically. "You are Sephardic and the Sephardim took names of distinguished family members as their surnames. You are the decendant of Chacham (ח) Rabbi (ר) somebody with Shin (ש) in their name. It's either Shimon or Sasson or something else, but that clearly the derivative of Horesh."

You see, it all makes sense. When Jews write the names of Rabbis and teachers, they use acronyms. Chacham Rabbi Somebody would be written ח’רש, which would be pronounced Kha'resh or Kho'resh. The apastrophe could easily be misread as a Yod (י) making the name Hirsh (חירש), or as the vowel Waw/Vav (ו) making the name Horesh (חורש).

So, the bad news, as this guest pointed out, is that it's unlikely that we will ever find out who this Chacham Rabbi Somebody really was or where he came from. We are, to a point, orphans of Jewish history, bound to create a our own story and define the meaning of our name for ourselves. The good news, at least as I like to hear it, is that we are descendants of at least two Torah scholars, Chacham Rabbi Eliezer, and now Chacham Rabbi Somebody. We have large shoes to fill. We will walk this world and add pages to the narrative that is our family history, and who knows, perhaps one day one of our children or grandchildren, inspired by these heroes of their own past, will rise to inspire those around them enough, so that they become the next Chacham Rabbi Horesh.