Why Not To Name Your Child After Hitler
And the long, broken tradition of Jewish Adolphs
August 09, 2010
Harpo Marx.(Wikipedia)
Here is a tip, based on the recent experience of New Jersey couple Heath and Deborah Campbell: If you name your child Adolf Hitler, the authorities will take him away from you. Here is a further tip: If you would like to name your child Adolf Hitler and would not like the authorities to find out and take him away from you, do not ask the local supermarket to make a birthday cake with his full name on it.
Incidentally, one of Hitler’s more overlooked crimes (justifiably, sure) is that he turned a perfectly good German first name into something unacceptable. Jews named Adolph (apparently they tended to choose the “-ph” over the “-f”?) included such luminaries as Adolph Ochs, who bought the New York Times and whose Sulzberger family owns the paper to this day; Adolph Gottlieb, a top abstractionist painter; and Adolph Marx, known to you and me as Harpo. Reports of Adolf Eichmann’s Jewishness, on the other hand, are greatly exaggerated.
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
