Names

[valarltd]

I have a pair of brothers named Ariel and David benEzra. What ethnicity are they? Is there any ambiguity?

Short of naming them Tevye and Hymie Jewy Bar Jewison is there any way I could have made their family origin clearer?

Does anyone see those names, coupled with the phrase "strongly middle eastern features" and think "oh, Arabian, how nice?" Just curious here.

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Comments

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

I see "Ben" in front of a last name and I think Jewish. But then again, given my background, I may have a bit of a predisposition. :)

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

The problem is "Ariel", which makes most people think "Shakespeare" not "Jew".

[celestinenox]

Or female mermaid.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Jinx

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

You're right. That's going to be a dominating association.

[celestinenox]

English major? :D

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

No, just a generation older than the Disney movie.*g*

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Most people are going to think Little Mermaid before Shakespeare and Skip Shakespeare before Ariel Sharon and Ari Fleischer. But "lion of God" is exactly right for this man.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

Suggestion if you think Ariel is going to lead too many to think Little Mermaid.... Ariyeh (or Areyeh depending on how you want to transliterate it)(nickname "Ari") means lion in Hebrew (It's my cousin's name).

[firefly67.livejournal.com]

What about Ariel Sharon, prominent Israeli? Maybe it wasn't spelled this way, can't remember.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Does it matter that the readers know for a fact that they are Jewish? One of the things I loved about Numbers is that they cast an obviously Jewish cast as the central family, but the show ran three or four seasons before religion/ethnicity was even mentioned. So it was incidental, but it was also always there.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

This was more of a check to see if I was crazy. My co-author saw only "middle eastern" in the description and assumed they were Muslim, despite the name. I was doing a check to see if the name was recognizably Jewish or if most readers are going to think "oo, Muslim." The Jewishness is central to them, but not their only defining trait. Just as Sean and Tara O'Neill (our heroes) are Catholic, but that's not all they are. We're never explicitly told in either case, as we are with the one who is Church of Christ, Programmer, since I assumed my readers would recognize the markers, like names and practices.