I have conducted a statistical analysis of given names from over
6,000 tombstones in several early 20th-century landsmanshaft
cemeteries in New York and Boston, to see if I could discern
patterns in the names that our immigrant Jewish ancestors
adopted when they came to America. Tombstones are a particularly
useful source, because they contain both the English and Hebrew
given names. Some basic guidelines have emerged, but they must
be understood as just guidelines. Again, there are no hard and
fast rules — immigrants were free to choose whatever name
sounded fashionable to them. The new American given names fall
into one of four classifications: (1) Language-Equivalent
Versions. If the English language-equivalent name was considered
"fashionable" at that time, that name was most often the one
adopted. So most of those with the Hebrew name Avraham took the
English name Abe or Abraham; the vast majority of those named
Binyamin became Ben or Benjamin, and virtually all Davids became
David. But the English equiv