Celebrate Your Name Week

Reposted and updated from 2009 

The first week of March is Celebrate your Name Week

Celebrate Your Name Week is a holiday created in 1997 by American amateur onomatologist Jerry Hill. Hill declared the first full week in March a week for everyone in the world to embrace and celebrate his or her name, and to appreciate names in general, by having fun getting to know facts about names. This is a week set aside to participate in names-related hobbies, activities, and to take part in entertaining names-related events inspired by a fondness for and true appreciation of names.

My first name: John

John comes from the Hebrew Yochanan, meaning 'G-d is gracious.' It isn’t short, as some assume, for Jonathan. Jonathan comes from the Hebrew Yanatan, which means 'Gift from G-d,' and is a longer form of Nat(h)an.

My Hebrew name: בָּרוּ (Baruch).

Baruch is a Hebrew word meaning, “Blessed.” Benedict is the common English version of this name. My parents chose “Baruch” naming me after my great grandfather, Barnet "Barney" Newmark (1886-1956).

My middle name: Cruvant.

Cruvant is one of my ancestral surnames, the maiden name of my paternal great grandmother Bertha Cruvant Newmark (1887-1978; She and Barney were married in 1911.) Since my parents followed the tradition of choosing names from deceased ancestors, my middle name came from Bertha’s father, Moshe Leyb Cruvant. The origin of Cruvant is the town Kruvandai, Lithuania. Almost every conceivable phonetic spelling exists somewhere on the family tree: (C/K)r(U/OO)van(T/D). I blame it on individuals who were used to transliterating Hebrew to English, and had no problem 'transliterating' Lithuanian to English as well, even if the two languages shared an alphabet.

My surname: Newmark

The origin of our surname isn’t certain. It is thought that the surname was Neimark (or Nejmark) in Poland. There are multiple Newmark “clans” in the United States, and it is uncertain whether they are related, though several appear to have originated in Poland, and several made stops along the way in Great Britain.

Namesakes

I share the name “John Newmark” with a Canadian pianist (1904-1991) - Though he came from Germany, and his original surname was Neumark.

I also share my name with the British biologist, and identical twin who appeared on the television show, To Tell the Truth, with his brother, George.