Q&A: Names
Names
Question
Hello,
Is there any obligation from the Torah to give a child a name?
If you can, please also address the line of thinking here: does the Torah care about a person and want to prevent a situation in which someone is “humiliated,” with some diminution of dignity in not having a name, as if he doesn’t count?
Do you think that kind of way of thinking about the Torah is relevant?
A friend told me that this is just the way of the world: people will call him something somehow, because they’ll need to. Even if they call him “Lemalem”—that will become his name.
But are there not any boundaries from the Torah’s perspective, such that parents should not be allowed to give a degrading name to a child?
Or because this is so negligible, the Torah simply does not address it?
But what is its essential position? Even if it does not command anything because it is negligible, can one condemn a parent who gives his son a degrading name, and criticize him from a Torah perspective, or would you define it simply as disgraceful on a human level?
Answer
I do not see a source for such a prohibition, aside from the prohibition against harming a person. Even the commandment of levirate marriage, which might seemingly serve as evidence that there is an idea of establishing a name for the dead, is interpreted by the Sages as not referring to the name (this is one of the only places where the interpretation overrides the plain meaning).
Beyond that, it is possible that levirate marriage is concerned with the name because that is an interest, not a commandment.
But why is there a need to discuss this in terms of Jewish law? It is obvious that such a person is behaving in a very ugly way, and that is quite enough.