I Was Embarrassed of My Hebrew Name

By Avital Norman Nathman for Raising Kvell

“How do you pronounce it? Ah-vee-tle? Ah-vie-tle?”

“It’s pronounced Ah-vee-TAHL.”

“Ah-vittle?”

“Ah-vee-TAHL.”

“Oh…yeah. I get it. That’s pretty.”

I always dreaded the first day of class from ninth grade on. Because on that first day you had to sit through roll call–where they ran down the list, calling out students one at a time, checking off attendance and putting faces to names. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. But my name? It always seemed to cause a stumbling block for folks, at least outside the Jewish community. Before entering the public school system, I attended a Schechter elementary and middle school where the name Avital never caused anyone to bat an eye. But once outside that comfortable Jewish space? There was no telling how my name would be butchered. Usually, teachers would mess it up a few times before I had to pipe up to correct them, drawing the stares of everyone in class.

I grew to really hate that first day of class. Sometimes, I would even daydream about changing my name. What was so special about Avital anyway? I didn’t even have a middle name to fall back on, just the first and last name. Visions of being called Agatha floated through my head (what? I was a voracious reader and Agatha Christie was a favorite of mine through much of high school. And it’s kind of cute, no?). Anything to escape the discomfort of somebody bumbling my actual name. When they couldn’t pronounce it I felt a sense of “otherness”–one that reminded me that I was unlike the other kids who drank milk with their meat sandwiches and went to church on Sundays. At some point, I told people to just call me Avi… it was better that way.

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