MAZEL TOV!
What’s in a Name?
FOR JEWISH COUPLES, THE ANSWER IS CHANGING
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
F or as long as there’s been Judaism, there’s
been the Jewish tradition of bucking naming
conventions. Abraham and Sarah, the religion’s foreparents,
changed their respective names from “Avram”
and “Sarai,” adding extra letters as a reminder of
God’s presence. After Jacob wrestled with angels,
God changed his name to “Israel.”
Thousands of years later, Jews in the
Philadelphia area are continuing the longstand-
ing Jewish tradition of breaking and remaking
the rules with the name game, especially when it
comes to marriage.

Instead of following the convention of a woman
taking her husband’s last name upon tying the
knot, heterosexual couples are getting creative
26 OCTOBER 20, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
with changing their last names — or refusing to
change their names altogether.

“We have the power, we have the agency
to go by that which we choose or feel inspired
to become,” said Philadelphia resident Molly
Wernick, who married her partner Andrew Davies
in 2017.

Wernick drew on the breaking of naming con-
ventions of Jewish ancestors in her decision to
keep her last name upon getting married. (On
their wedding website, the couple wrote in jest
that Davies chose to keep his last name, instead
of taking Wernick’s.)
Jewish values aside, Wernick was not inter-
ested in what she called the patriarchal practice of
changing her last name to match her husband’s.

“I grew up just seeing with every wedding invi-
tation or bar mitzvah invitation, credit card off er,
the societal assumption that a woman becomes
the property of her husband,” Wernick said.

Keeping her last name also felt like an opportu-
nity to hold onto family lineage, harkening back to
her family’s story of her great-grandfather coming
to the U.S. after a run-in with the czar’s army. At
the end of the day, Wernick’s name was inter-
twined deeply with her own identity.

“I was born Molly Wernick,” she said. “It is who
I am.”
For other women, the decision to keep a last
name is practical.

Ellie Kaplan-Kahn, though she legally hyphen-
ated her name, still uses her maiden name Kaplan



Courtesy of Molly Wernick and Andrew Davies
MAZEL TOV!
Molly Wernick and Andrew Davies decided to keep their respective names
after getting married, in an eff ort to reject patriarchal norms and preserve
their respective family identities.

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