How to Find Your Hebrew Name: A Complete Guide

Your Name in the Language of Prayer

Somewhere in your family’s history, someone gave you a Hebrew name. It may have been announced at a brit milah eight days after you were born, or at a naming ceremony in the synagogue. It was recorded on a certificate, written in Hebrew letters, and used when you were called to the Torah for the first time at your bar or bat mitzvah. It appears on your ketubah if you married under a chuppah. It will appear on your gravestone.

But many Jews have lost track of their Hebrew names. Assimilation, immigration, and the passage of time have severed connections. Some people were never given a Hebrew name at all. Others have one but have never used it and cannot remember it.

Finding or choosing a Hebrew name is an act of reclamation — a way of connecting to Jewish identity at its most personal level. This guide will help you do it.

If You Were Given a Hebrew Name

Ask your parents or grandparents. The simplest starting point is family. Your parents likely remember the Hebrew name given to you at birth, and they may know the names they were given as well. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles can also be sources.

Check documents. Your Hebrew name may appear on your brit milah or baby naming certificate, bar or bat mitzvah certificate, ketubah, or synagogue membership records. If your family belonged to a synagogue when you were born, the synagogue may have records.

Contact the synagogue. If you were named in a synagogue, the congregation may have records. Even decades later, many synagogues maintain archives of naming ceremonies, bar and bat mitzvahs, and membership rolls.

Search family records. Immigration documents, old prayer books, gravestones of relatives, and family Bibles sometimes contain Hebrew names. Jewish genealogy resources like JRI-Poland and JewishGen can help trace family naming patterns.

If You Need to Choose a Hebrew Name

Adults who were never given a Hebrew name — including converts to Judaism — have the meaningful opportunity to choose one. Here are the traditional approaches:

Honor a deceased relative. In Ashkenazi tradition, naming after a deceased loved one is considered a great honor and keeps their memory alive. You might take the exact Hebrew name of a grandparent or great-grandparent, or choose a name that begins with the same letter.

Match your English name. Many Hebrew names have English equivalents or near-equivalents. Aaron, David, Daniel, Miriam, Rachel, Sarah, and Rebecca are used in both languages. For names without a direct Hebrew equivalent, you might choose a Hebrew name that starts with the same letter or shares a similar meaning.

Choose a name with meaning. Every Hebrew name carries meaning. Eliana means “God has answered.” Natan means “he gave.” Tamar means “date palm.” Choosing a name whose meaning resonates with your life story or aspirations adds personal significance.

Biblical names. Names of biblical figures remain the most popular choices. For men: Avraham, Yitzhak, Ya’akov, Moshe, David, Eliyahu, Yosef. For women: Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Devorah, Esther, Ruth.

Modern Israeli names. Hebrew names from modern Israel — Oren (pine tree), Liora (my light), Noam (pleasantness), Shira (song) — are also valid choices that carry Hebrew meaning while feeling contemporary.

The Format of a Hebrew Name

A complete Hebrew name consists of your given name followed by “ben” (son of) or “bat” (daughter of) and your father’s Hebrew name. In many Conservative and Reform communities, both parents’ names are used.

For example: Yonatan ben Avraham v’Sarah (Jonathan, son of Abraham and Sarah).

Converts traditionally take the patronymic “ben/bat Avraham Avinu v’Sarah Imeinu” (son/daughter of Abraham our Father and Sarah our Mother), connecting them to the first Jewish family.

When Your Hebrew Name Is Used

Your Hebrew name is used in the most significant moments of Jewish life: when you are called to the Torah for an aliyah, on your ketubah, in the mi sheberach prayer for healing, in the memorial prayer (El Malei Rachamim), and on your gravestone. It is the name by which you are known in the Jewish community and before God.

There is a tradition that your Hebrew name reflects something essential about your soul — that the name your parents chose (or that you chose for yourself) is not accidental but connected to your spiritual identity. Whether or not you take this mystically, there is something profound about having a name in the language of the Torah, a name that connects you to thousands of years of Jewish naming and identity.

Finding your Hebrew name — or choosing one — is one of the simplest and most meaningful steps you can take in deepening your connection to Jewish life. It costs nothing, requires no ceremony (unless you want one), and gives you something permanent: a name in the language your ancestors prayed in, loved in, and lived in.