For most people, a name is just the beginning. It’s what you answer to, what appears on your documents, what’s stitched into the label on your kindergarten cubby or engraved on your graduation diploma. But for those of us who are children of Holocaust survivors, those of us in the second generation, or “2Gs”—names carry weight far beyond identity. They are markers of memory, loss, continuity, and resilience.

In my family, there was no ceremony around it, no grand explanation. It was just understood. The names we carry belonged to people who had died, no, were murdered, in the Holocaust. There was never a question of naming a child after someone who had survived. Most survivors in our circle were Ashkenazi, and in our tradition, children are named only after the deceased. But beyond that, it was assumed that everyone who had once held these names had perished.

These names were not just chosen; they were assigned by history, by grief, by love, by memory.

I carry the first names of both my grandmothers. My next sister carries their middle names. My youngest sister is named after my mother’s........

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