What’s In A Name?
For most of my life, hearing someone else named Yuval was almost unheard of. It was a name that set me apart. I vaguely remember a cousin in Israel who shared it, though we only met once when I was a kid. Years later, I met another Yuval while at UM, and that was it. Two encounters in decades of lived experience.
The foreignness of my name became part of my identity. Americans didn’t know what to make of it. Juan, Hugo, “U-Haul?” I heard it all. I developed shortcuts: “Like Duval Street, but with a Y,” or using Robert Duvall as a reference point. The mispronunciations used to frustrate me when I was young, but eventually they became part of my story.
When I became a dad, I thought about my experience while naming my daughter. I liked the idea of her name carrying weight and lineage. It ended up being an homage to my paternal grandmother, a way to honor my father after his death, but also, in how we chose to spell it, to give her something slightly open-ended. A name that might, like mine, require a small act of self-definition each time she introduced herself. I figured those moments of correction or acceptance would help her learn who she was every time she had to introduce herself.
Then came Yuval Noah Harari.
The first time I encountered his name, it was a reference to his book, Sapiens. For whatever mix of reasons, it took me a year or two to finally read the book, and I was impressed by it, to say the least. I’m sure I had some illogical sense of pride or relief. “Whew, he didn’t let me down,” as if his accomplishments carried any reflection of me in them.
After being introduced to his work in that form, it took another while before I saw him listed as a guest on one of the podcasts I regularly listened to. And that’s when it happened: I heard someone coming through my speakers casually say “Yuval happy to have you here…” and my brain did a double take. It still felt like a cue meant for me. I started seeking out his interviews and talks after that, because I appreciated his perspective and insights on politics, technology, and human behavior. And with each mention of “Yuval” I continued to feel that slight jolt of recognition. The name no longer felt foreign. It was suddenly in the same sentences as world leaders, tech moguls, and philosophers.
Over time, the shock faded, replaced by something stranger: curiosity about what it means when your name no longer functions as a marker of difference. People with names like John or Wendy grow up hearing themselves reflected back constantly from the world around them. Their identity doesn’t have to fight for space; it’s already part of the collective vocabulary. I grew up on the other end of that experience. My name was a conversation starter, an explanation waiting to happen.
Now, every time I hear Yuval Noah Harari on a podcast or interview, hearing the name lands differently. It’s not exactly pride, but a kind of quiet resonance. The word itself, my name, has entered the culture in a way I never expected. And maybe that says something about where we are now: in a world where identity, language, and belonging is to some degree being homogenized slowly but surely.
Maybe that’s just the cost of a more connected world: everything, even something as personal as a name, gets folded into the collective mix. There’s a small loss in that, a softening of the edges that once made us distinct.
I guess the optimist’s view is to see it as something that once made me feel different now feeling more like a bridge. When someone hears “Yuval” today, maybe they think of a historian-philosopher talking about the future of humanity. Maybe someday they’ll stumble across my work, too. Either way, I’ve learned that the meaning of a name isn’t just what you inherit; it’s what you fill it with. The world may be flattening, but the stories we attach to our names, the way we carry them, can still make them our own.