other
names of Mordechai and Esther
מרדכי · פתחיה · בלשן · אסתר · הדסה
Bottom line
All five are names and stay transliterated in roman type; what a translator must not do is treat the pairs as one name each. Mordechai is the Babylonian name the Megillah uses throughout, Petachyah his Hebrew name, Bilshan a title of his mastery of languages. Esther is the name the Megillah uses; Hadassah appears once, at Esther 2:7, whose hi Esther says they are one woman. Which was her birth name is a Tannaic dispute, so a translation should not settle it silently.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| מרדכי | Mordechai | Mordechai | his Babylonian name; alluded to in mar dror, Onkelos's mira dachya (Chullin 139b) |
| פתחיה | Petachyah | Petachyah | his Hebrew name, for opening and expounding words in seventy languages (Shekalim 5:1) |
| בלשן | Bilshan | Bilshan | a title, one who blends languages and expounds (Menachos 65a), or a separate man (Ibn Ezra) |
| אסתר | Esther | Esther | from hiding (Rabbi Yehuda), or from Istahar, the gentiles' name (Rabbi Nechemiah, Vilna Gaon) |
| הדסה | Hadassah | Hadassah | from hadas, the myrtle, emblem of the righteous (Rabbi Meir, Zechariah 1:8) |
Where the authorities disagree
Which was her real name. Megillah 13a gives three Tannaim. Rabbi Meir: her name was Esther, and Hadassah is a description, the righteous being likened to a hadas (Zechariah 1:8). Rabbi Yehuda: her name was Hadassah, and Esther is from nistar, since she hid her people (Esther 2:20); Rabbi Avigdor Katz adds that Mordechai hid her from the king's men. Rabbi Nechemiah: Hadassah was her name, and the nations called her Esther after Istahar. The Vilna Gaon follows Rabbi Nechemiah, the Chachmei Tzarfas commentary Rabbi Meir; Ralbag leaves it open; Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi and Rabbi Yitzchak Arama hold Hadassah was the birth name, Esther the name of the court.
What Istahar is. Rashi (to Megillah 13a) and Sefer HeAruch: the moon, from Aramaic sihara. Rabbi Yaakov Emden: Venus, since Targum to Iyov 31:26 lists Istahar as a light beside the moon; so too Yalkut Shimoni (Esther §1053), whose version of Rabbi Nechemiah's statement reads explicitly that the idolaters called her after Venus, which they called Istahar, and Targum Sheini, which explains the name by the astrological force of Nogah, Venus. The column notes that Rabbi Yosef Nechmias (to Esther 2:7) has Istahar as the sun, and says outright that this is incorrect, though in some pagan mythologies the counterpart of Istahar may have been the wife or consort of the sun god.
Foreign name or Hebrew in disguise. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (Manos HaLevi) and Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi (Yosef Lekach), with Ibn Ezra: she took Esther when Mordechai wanted her origin concealed, the Aramaic for hadas being assa, so the new name still says myrtle. Maharsha (to Chullin 139b) and Rabbi Meir Mazuz (Sansan L'Yair): against Rabbi Ashkenazi's Aramaic, it is Persian. The Maskilic scholar Yitzchak Ber Levinsohn (Shorashei Levanon), whom the column brings here, argues that Esther is a portmanteau of asa, myrtle, and ter, "fresh" (by tav/tes interchange), making the name an exact translation of the phrase hadas ra'anan used by Sefer HeAruch. (The column adds an aside: a king of Yehudah named Asa, a great-grandson of Shlomo, has his name spelled exactly like the Aramaic for myrtle, aleph samech aleph, but it has found no source that ties King Asa to Queen Esther or to the myrtle.) Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam: her family Judaized Istahar into Esther, while Mordechai, who let no loanwords into his Hebrew, kept calling her Hadassah.
Mordechai's other names. Megillah 16b and Menachos 65a read Mordechai-Bilshan (Ezra 2:2, Nechemiah 7:7) as one man with a title (see Maharsha and Keren Orah to Menachos 65a); Ibn Ezra (to Esther 2:21) presumes Bilshan is the next man listed. On why the Megillah keeps the Babylonian name: Torah Temimah (to Shemos 30:23 §48 and Esther 2:5 §11) postulates that his true Hebrew name was Petachyah, and that because Mordechai carries an idolatrous association the Gemara sought a favorable allusion for it in the Torah and thereby gave it some legitimacy; Rabbi Yehonatan Eybeschutz (Yaaros Dvash vol. 2 drush 13) holds that as Moshe's given name is absent from the Torah after "erase me from Your book," so Mordechai, who likewise gave himself up for the Jewish People, caused his real name Petachyah to be left out of the Megillah.
Whether there was a fourth name. One opinion in Megillah 15a has the navi Malachi be Mordechai himself, called Malachi because he was viceroy to the Persian king, mishneh l'melech, the column presuming that malachi is read as kin to melech; that would give him three names, Mordechai, Petachyah and Malachi. Other opinions there make Malachi an alternate name for Ezra, or a separate man altogether, and the Rambam, in his introduction to Yad HaChazakah, follows the last, since he lists Malachi, Mordechai Bilshan and Ezra as separate members of the Anshei Knesses HaGedolah.
Distinctions
Mordechai (מרדכי) and Merodach
Chullin 139b asks where Mordechai is hinted in the Torah and answers mar dror, pure myrrh (Shemos 30:23), rendered mira dachya by Onkelos: a tzaddik gives off fragrance as myrrh does. Megillah 10b has Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani open his expositions on the Megillah from "instead of the thorn-bush will arise a brosh" (Yeshayahu 55:13), playing on brosh as b'rosh, "at the head," and reading it of Mordechai, whose name alludes to mar dror, which the Torah calls besamim rosh, the head of all spices; Peirush HaRokeach (to Shemos 30:23) adds that the gematria of rosh, 501, equals zehu Mordechai HaTzadik. The column stresses that none of this is meant as etymology: the Gemara is giving an exegetical allusion to the name in the Torah, and the question of the name's actual origin is a separate one.
The same consonants are a Babylonian name in Tanach: Evil Merodach (Melachim II 25:27; the article prints 28:27), Merodach Baladan (Yeshayahu 39:1), who appears elsewhere as Berodach Baladan (Melachim II 20:12), probably by the interchangeability of mem and beis, and Yirmiyahu 50:2, where Merodach stands as another name for the Babylonian god Bel, the counterpart of the Canaanite Baal. The column reports that archaeologists have found Merodach/Marduk to have been one of the chief gods of the Babylonian pantheon, and that the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish tells of Marduk defeating Tiamat, the primordial sea monster of chaos, and using her body to make the world. It then says plainly what it is not claiming: not that Mordechai was named after that deity, but that the personal name Mordechai and its variants, current in Babylonian and Persian society, were rooted in the god's name, and that once such names became ordinary one bears them without being named for an idol, much as people today are called Mark or Veronica without a thought for Mars or Nike.
Dr. Alexander Kohut, in HeAruch HaShaleim, suggests instead that Mordechai means "small person" in Persian, a name given him by others in appreciation of his exceptional humility. (The column adds that it had once taken the Irish and Scottish name Murdoch for a corruption of Mordechai, but on looking further found it more likely from the Gaelic muir, sea.) Mordechai's name appears 58 times in the Megillah, and twice more in Tanach as Mordechai Bilshan.
Petachyah (פתחיה) and Bilshan (בלשן)
Shekalim 5:1, which puts Petachyah in charge of the kinnim, identifies him with Mordechai and says he was called Petachyah because he would poteach words and expound them, and because he knew seventy languages. Unlike Mordechai, the name has a Hebrew ring: it already belongs to a kohen in David's day (Divrei HaYamim I 24:16) and to Levi'im in post-exilic Yerushalayim (Ezra 10:23; Nechemiah 9:5, and see 11:24), and onomastically it parses as the root פ-ת-ח with a theophoric element, two of the four letters of the Shem HaMeforash. Rabbi Chaim Palagi finds an allusion to the Mishnah's identification in gematria: half the value of each of the first three letters of Petachyah (peh, tav, ches) equals each of the first three of Mordechai (mem, reish, dalet), while double the value of Petachyah's last two letters equals Mordechai's last two (kaf, yod).
Menachos 65a: all the Sanhedrin were required to know the seventy languages, but Mordechai stood out even among them, in that he could mix and match between languages rather than hold them as seventy separate bodies of knowledge; that is what the Gemara reads out of the name Bilshan, a contraction of bayil lishni v'darish. Stories illustrating the depth of his mastery are at Menachos 64b-65a and Yerushalmi Shekalim 5:1. That skill is what let him understand Bigsan and Seresh plotting regicide in a foreign tongue (Megillah 13b), which he reported to Achashverosh, and which later helped turn the tide against Haman.
Esther (אסתר) and Hadassah (הדסה)
Esther 2:7 is the single occurrence of Hadassah, and it carries its own gloss, hi Esther. Chullin 139b answers the parallel question for her name with haster astir, "I shall surely hide My face" (Devarim 31:18). Targum Sheini (to Esther 2:7) calls Hadassah her "Hebrew name," because a myrtle gives the world a good fragrance as her good deeds did, and because the righteous are compared to a myrtle; and Megillah 10b has Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani read "instead of the thorn-bush will arise a myrtle-tree" (Yeshayahu 55:13) of Esther the myrtle replacing Vashti the thorn-bush.
Beyond the myrtle of the righteous, the column gathers several further explanations of the name Hadassah. Megillah 13a, as Rashi reads Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha, implies a greenish complexion the color of a myrtle leaf (the column notes that Venus was anciently taken for a green planet, which may fit the Istahar connection), and Ben Azzai there gives her average stature, neither tall as a lulav nor stout as an esrog. Rabbi Refael Berdugo cites an unknown source that Herod's daughter had an especially pleasant body odor, put down to her mother's eating esrogim while carrying her, and on that basis speculates that Esther was called Hadassah because her body likewise gave off a pleasant fragrance. Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim points to Berachos 57a, that one who sees a myrtle in a dream will prosper in property, and if he owns none will come into property unexpectedly: Esther was called Hadassah because she unexpectedly inherited Haman's estate (Esther 8:1). Other sources find in the name an allusion to her age when she was taken to the palace, the gematria of Hadassah being 74 and a rabbinic tradition putting her at exactly 74 (Midrash Panim Acheirim version 2 §2; Ibn Ezra to Esther 2:7; see also Bereishis Rabbah 39:13); and Targum to Esther 2:7 has her called Esther, from hiding, for the modesty she kept through the seven and a half decades in Mordechai's house.
The column also traces Istahar outward: its etymological cognates include the English star, astrology, astronomy, asterisk, asteroid, disaster, stellar, estrogen and Easter, the name Stella, the Languedocien Astruc, and the German Stern, a common Jewish surname; some have argued that the given name Estori, borne by Rabbi Estori HaParchi, belongs here too. The Pri Megadim writes in one of his letters that the Yiddish woman's name Sterna, or Shterna, derives from Esther, and weighs whether that should bear on how it is written in gittin, with sin and tes like a foreign name or with samech and tav like the Hebrew Esther. On the Nogah side, the column lists the pagan names under which that force was worshipped as goddess of love and fertility: the Canaanite Ashtoreth, Sumerian Inanna, Babylonian Ishtar or Astarte, Greek Aphrodite, Latin Venus and Germanic Eostre.
Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin reads the two names as the lesson of Purim: when Hashem's face is hidden (Esther), Israel still holds fast and does His will (Hadassah).
Two closing notes the column adds: Melechet Shlomo (to Mishnah Pesachim 2:6) records a bitter herb customarily called Esther HaMalkah, and Rabbi Yitzchak Epstein cites some who speculate that it was so called because of a tradition that, besides the seeds Esther ate in Achashverosh's palace (Megillah 13a), she ate this herb as well; and Dr. Herbert C. Dobrinsky records that in some Sephardic communities women named Esther are especially careful to keep Taanis Esther.
Rendering guidance
- Transliterate all five, roman type, no translated gloss in the body; bring in "myrtle" or "hidden" only in a note, and say whose reading it is.
- Esther 2:7 is the trap: "he raised Hadassah, that is Esther." Collapsing the names, or rendering Hadassah as "Myrtle," destroys the pasuk's own clarification and the sugya on it; compare hu haGoral (Esther 3:7, 9:24).
- Where the Gemara plays on a name (mira dachya, haster astir), keep the Hebrew in brackets; these are derashos on sound.
- Do not write that Mordechai "was named after" a Babylonian deity. The column's own formulation is the one to follow: the name and its variants, current in Babylonian and Persian society, were rooted in the god's name, but by then one bore such a name without being named for an idol.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Myrrh & Myrtle," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach: Part 1 (2024-03-02) and Part 2 (2024-03-09), the latter posted twice; raw texts in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/ under ids 11285, 11286 and 11326, the last two identical. Primary loci: Shemos 30:23, 32:32; Devarim 31:18; Melachim II 20:12, 25:27; Yeshayahu 39:1, 55:13; Yirmiyahu 50:2; Zechariah 1:8; Iyov 31:26; Esther 2:5, 2:7, 2:20, 2:21, 3:7, 8:1, 9:24; Ezra 2:2, 10:23; Nechemiah 7:7, 9:5, 11:24; Divrei HaYamim I 24:16; Berachos 57a; Megillah 10b, 13a, 13b, 15a, 16b; Menachos 64b-65a; Chullin 139b; Mishnah Shekalim 5:1, Pesachim 2:6; Yerushalmi Shekalim 5:1; Bereishis Rabbah 39:13; Midrash Panim Acheirim version 2 §2; Yalkut Shimoni Esther §1053; Targum Sheini, Targum and Biur HaGra to Esther 2:7; Peirush HaRokeach to Shemos 30:23; Maharsha and Keren Orah to Menachos 65a; Manos HaLevi; Yosef Lekach; Sansan L'Yair; Shorashei Levanon; HeAruch HaShaleim; Melechet Shlomo; Torah Temimah to Shemos 30:23 §48 and Esther 2:5 §11; Yaaros Dvash vol. 2 drush 13; Rambam's introduction to Yad HaChazakah. The column's plugs for its author's own books, and its cross-reference to its earlier essay on pur and goral, are not reproduced here.