What's in a Name?

By Laurence I. Barrett

The shortest route to Waspdom, when it was still the new arrival's destination of choice, was the swapping of an ethnic name for an "American" one. A case in point:

A well-seasoned Irishman in the New York city hall pressroom eyed with obvious distaste the new boy being introduced around. "Barrett?" he sneered in lieu of a handshake. "You're no Barrett." He was offended that this kid of obviously Semitic stock had the temerity to filch a surname from the old sod. Stuck for a rebuttal, I swallowed the slight. Even now, 35 years later, a good answer eludes me. But to my father, who had decreed the new family name, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Harold Baratz, like many offspring of immigrants from Eastern or Southern Europe, wanted desperately to be seen as American. For years he complained that his name was a handicap, often misspelled or mispronounced, a dead giveaway. His brother Samuel had rechristened himself Bill Barzell. That was too exotic for Dad, who did little but grumble about our foreign-sounding name until I started to get bylines on my high school paper. That did it. Not long after my bar mitzvah, he went to court and got a writ requiring the world to call us Barrett. In journalism, he assured me, an American name would help.

The subject of ethnic pride never arose. Dad was simply being practical. In the New York of his day, a tribal pecking order prevailed in many fields. Mario Cuomo, though a top student, couldn't find a berth in any major law firm. Except for the lowliest jobs, Wall Street, insurance and banking were also closed to those of Mediterranean or Slavic descent. A handful of legal and financial establishments were the preserves of high-caste German Jews, seldom hospitable to Polish and Russian Jews. The Postal Service was more ) egalitarian. The merit system allowed a Baratz to rise in rank, slowly. But my father felt that he lived in confinement -- a condition from which he would abet his only son's escape by providing cover.

Of course, the ruse counted for nothing; college tuition, which he also provided, was much more effective. Like most Jews who anglicized their names, my family continued to advertise its real identity in many ways. By the time my father drank toasts at his grandsons' bar-mitzvah parties, the imperative for disguise was gone. Pamela Nadell, professor of Jewish studies at American University, traces the shift to the mid-1960s, when Israel's military prowess evoked group pride and the black-is-beautiful movement struck a chord among Jews, though few Jews went as far as some blacks who adopted African names. A son of the author Irving Wallace made a statement by reverting to David Wallechinsky in his own writing. But that statement was Slavic, not Hebraic.

Many names considered Jewish are in fact German, Polish or Russian in derivation. Dad didn't know in 1950 that he was trading in a contrivance that had been in the family for only 140 years or so. Later research by cousin Lewis Baratz (a roots maven) discovered that circa 1800 our antecedents in the Jewish pale went by Ben Reb Tzadik (Son of the Master Scholar). Apparently there was an earlier pedagogue in our crowd. For tax purposes or other bureaucratic reasons, the authorities in a few countries around 1810 ordered Jews to give up generic Hebrew titles. Like all Diaspora Jews over the centuries, the first Baratz did what seemed necessary to adapt, adding vowels to the B, R and Tz of Ben Reb Tzadik to produce Baratz. So Harold Baratz, in his own way, adapted. But he lived long enough to understand that his was the last generation in America to perceive a need for camouflage.