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From: R. Kovacs
Subject: The uniqueness requirement
Date: 1 Sivan 5783
This reminds me of something a cousin of mine (or a second cousin, I never knew exactly) used to say about names.
In Munkács, many families had the same surname. Goldberg, Rosenberg, Weissman. My father's street alone had four families named Goldberg, none of them related to each other. To distinguish people, you needed more. Yitzchak Goldberg the baker. Yitzchak Goldberg the tailor. Yitzchak Goldberg whose father was the shammas.
The name was not enough. The description expanded until distinction was achieved. My cousin (the one who told me this, or maybe it was his father who told him) said this was true everywhere in the region. In some villages you needed to go back three generations to find the distinguishing fact.
But there was a limit. At some point, Yitzchak Goldberg whose father was the shammas, who married the Kotzker's granddaughter, who lost his leg in the flood, who makes the best kokosh cake in the district became ridiculous. My cousin used to laugh when he told this story, though I was never sure if the example was real or invented to make the point.
The description defeated its purpose. You could not remember it. You could not use it in conversation. It was identification, not a name.
I wonder if our format will face the same problem. At some point, the block needed for uniqueness becomes absurd. The articulation becomes burden.
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