Baby Naming: Biblical Rites and Mother’s Rights
Who gets to name the child? Priestly and non-Priestly texts give two different answers.
Published: November 27, 2014
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Machzor Vitri 506, p.626; Alternatively: ישמח האיש ביוצאי חלציו ותגל האשה בפרי בטנה (Shibbolei ha-Leqet p. 373). Others: ישמח האב ביוצאי חלציו ותגל אמו בפרי בטנה (e.g. Baer’s Avodat Yisrael, 1868 p. 583).
Widely attested by the 12th-13th centuries though not found in the prayer books of the geonim Amram and Sa’adia that have different formulae.
The Samaritan has ויקרא.
The JPS Torah Commentary by Nahum M. Sarna, 1989 p. 42.
Not all. The Edom-Seir genealogies plus the king list (Gen 36) do not fit the P mould. Moreover, some P genealogies appear to incorporate older material e.g. the naming of Noah (Gen 5:29) that uses the tetragrammaton (a divine name studiously avoided by P prior to the name’s disclosure at Ex 6:3). Also, Gen 5:29 plainly alludes to a curse pronounced on Adam in Gen 3:17 – a demonstrably NP text.
Gen 29:32,33,35; 30:11,13,18, 20—21.
The man is anonymous, but Rashi, on midrashic authority, identifies the man as the angel Gabriel (see n.9 below).
Typical is Karla G. Bohmbach who must take it for granted that Leah named all her children including Levi in order to obtain her otherwise useful statistic: “In the Hebrew Bible women outnumber men as name-givers. Of the approximately forty-seven instances in which a name-giver is specified, twenty-nine involve women”. If that were not clear enough: “Leah names individually all of the nine children that she claims as her own”.(“Names and Naming in the Biblical World” in Women in Scripture edited by Meyers, Craven and Kraemer Houghton Mifflin 2000 p. 37).
Having identified Levi’s namer as Gabriel (n.7 above), Rashi’s midrashic source continues: “and he [Gabriel] bestowed upon him [Levi] the 24 priestly entitlements [mostly listed in Num 18]”.
This might also be relevant to the naming of Jacob. (Gen 25:26). Unlike Esau who is named by both parents jointly in MT (Gen 25:25), Jacob is named by his father alone (v.26). Again the Samaritan diverges, reading va-yiqre’u for Jacob too. Out on a limb is LXX that has the mother singlehandedly etiologizing and naming both sons.
The Hebrew מוציאים literally means to bring out and is the semantic equivalent of the Bavli’s derivatives of the verb nasaq.
