There are many reasons that a Jewish person might have a
Christian given name or might do a range of seemingly
un-Jewish things, despite being Jewish. In my own family,
the recent immigrant parents of my great grandmother, on one
side, and my grand mother on the other, died young. The
children improvised their up-bringing to a certain extent in
both of these families, and on one side, legally changed the
spelling of both first and last names. It's quite curious:
why would one want to change >from Dora Drozdowitz to Dorothy
Drosdowitz? It seems such a small change...

But on the other side, they took a firm departure from
Judaism, and whilst no-one married non-Jews, they practised
new religions (Christian Science), and for two generations,
no one on that branch knew anything about being Jewish, or
about Jewish practices, despite being 100% of Jewish
extraction. My own given name (of course I was born in the
50s, not the 1880s) is the most popular Catholic given name
in the world - my mother liked it - and my son's middle name
is Christian (named for a mentor of mine who died the week
of his birth).

The contemporary example of mine and my son's given names is
probably not pertinent, but the fact is I am 100% Jewish,
but my family lost much of the understanding and cultural
practices in the early 20th century in the New World.
Interestingly, we still married Jews, and knew we were
Jewish, but didn't do things the way it might have been
expectged of us.

Annemarie Jutel
Wellington, New Zealand