Names are funny, just in general, the mouth sounds often arbitrarily attributed to people so we can identify them. Name are often more than that, though, first names we can keep from what was given to us, or choose them for ourselves, either way says something about us. First names can even be passed down, connecting us to another member of our family just as easily. Last names can trace one’s ancestry back far, and can connect one to their family or history. My name has always been a bit strange, as I’m sure most of my peer know, but I’m unsure if they understand it’s complete nuances and connections, so I thought I’d detail them here!
So, my full legal name is Michael Worth Yager Novinski. This is my name at it’s most Americanized and Christianized. If one were to translate my name to it’s origins, it may look something like this: מיכאל Ægenworþ Jäger Nowicki. Now, that’s probably something that deserves further elaboration, so I’ll start from the first name.
Michael is the 12th most common first name of boys born in the US as of 2020, I share it with my father, and it is likely to originate from Judeo-Christian myth of Saint Michael the Arch angel. Biblically, he is a member of the prince class of angels and is the only one referred to as an “Arch-prince”. This often translates to Christians referring to him as an Archangel. The name is an anglicized version of מי כאל (mī kāʼēl). Which derives from the Phrase “who is like El?” which is interestingly implied to be a rhetorical question, implying that none are as powerful as El. This is really funny because if the angels are names by gods then it would be the equivalent of me naming my child “Nobody-is-as-cool-as-worth”. Biblically, מי כאל is supposed to battle Satan and cast him from heaven, although there is often a split in Jewish and Christian interpretations of him, with Jesus often taking on some of Michael’s roles in Christian tradition.
Next up is Worth, the name I go by, I am named after my mom’s maternal grandfather, who went by Worth as a nickname. Worth is short for Ainsworth, which come from the Old English Ægenworþ, with Ægen being a personal that may have at one point had significance, and Worþ meaning enclosure. Most people with this last name likely descend from people hailing from the English village of Ainsworth, although I do not know why my great grandfather has this as his first name.
Next, Yager, which I got from my Mom, it being her last name when she married my Dad, which she kept. Now, Yager is a relatively common last name in the world, and it’s difficult to trace where that side of the family traces up to because we know very little of my great grandfather Yager other than that he wasn’t from Mississippi, likely from Kentucky. The name on it’s own comes from Germany, originating from the Old German word “Jage”, which means to hunt, meaning the name is one of a hunter.
The Novinski name I inherited from my father, and in it’s case the family history can be traced back to Polish speaking Germany that the early Novinskis emigrated to America from in the 1880s. Novinski is an Americanized version of the Polish name Nowicki, which is often either meaning someone originating from the town of Nowice, or some who is in some way “New”, as the name itself originates from the Polish “Novy”, which means new, and the name itself would translate most literally into “New man”.
Basically, my full name is a lot of different words from a lot of different spaces, and I frankly find it and a lot of other names and their origins fascinating.
