"Little Aleph Millepied would be screwed in an Israeli playground."
-A Gawker (not Jezebel, sorry, mistake fixed) commenter, on Ms. P and her fiancé's choice to give their son the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet as a first name, resulting in a unusual name in English, and a potentially comical one in the original, with the not un-comical French last name coming right after. Luckily, should they decide to move there, no one in Israel speaks French.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Your daily Francophilic Zionism
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3 comments:
I guess this shows that multilingual celebrities give their kids cross-culturally stupid names.
Actually, plenty of people in Israel speak French. In the last few years there has been an increase in aliyah from France due to anti-semitism there. I'm currently in Israel, staying in South Jerusalem, and I definitely hear people speaking French on the streets.
On the other hand, there are a lot of interesting Israeli names. I don't think the Alef part would cause trouble, but the Millepied part might. (Does it actually mean "a thousand feet"? It seems like a really strange name to me).
Rebecca,
I should have been clearer, but I was being sarcastic. I study French Jews, and am well aware of the Francophone presence there. In Tel Aviv a few years back, I took pictures of the signs in French, or assuring customers that French was spoken.
As for Alef, according to the Israelis on that thread, that would be an odd name, but how odd, who knows. Millepied would probably be tough to pronounce for all but the French-speakers, and for them would indeed sound silly.
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