A little slack, I know... Name Change

I was looking back over the last week and realized I had another blogable moment that I completely overlooked. Last week I received an e-mail from Nefesh b'Nefesh with a link to an additional part of the online registration. This choice is completely optional but they wanted to know if I was changing my name. Many people stick with their English names, some change to the Hebrew name they were given by their parents and some do a hybrid of a Hebrew first name and their English last (family) name, but written phonetically in Hebrew.

My English name is Matt(hew) Gottlieb
My Hebrew name given by my parents is משה רחמיאל בן גרשון Moshe Rachmiel ben Gershon

The ben Gershon part of my name means son of Gershon, my father's Hebrew first name. My children are ben Moshe, son of Moshe. So if one is good at keeping up with which children are from which father then you can keep this straight.

It is an American thing to have two names before the "ben Gershon", to be like English first and middle names. In Israel they do not have middle names, so the Rachmiel would be confusing in Israel.

So, I have chosen to change my first name to Moshe but keep my last name Gottlieb. All my Israeli documentation will have my Hebrew name as Moshe Gottlieb but all my American documentation will stay as it is now. I'll also have an Israeli document that links the two names so to help to avoid confusion, but in most cases people would only see one set of documentation so there wouldn't be confusion, unless they were looking at both passports or driver's licenses.

So I completed the online request and they will confirm on the plane and when I get my Israeli ID it will have my new hybrid name. Are you confused yet?