[Avodah] The halachically correct way to spell "Harvey"

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

I am taking this from an Areivim discussion of "Hurricane Harvey & gematrias"
and how many gematrias one can make depending on how one chooses to spell
"Harvey". Since we are now discussing halakhah.

On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 9:54pm EDT, R Ben Rothke wrote:
: As to the beis din, is there a 'right' spelling for Harvey? Or most foreign
: names?  As to Harvey, I can easily think of 6 combinations.  The use of
: aleph and ayin always makes things interesting.

The very point I was trying to make is that yes, there is. See EhE
126. Which is why BD will at times invest a lot of thought to find the
correct spelling. The AhS follows it with pages of spelling lessons
for Yiddish and local names, as well as Hebrew names that have multiple
spellings in Tanakh. And he mentions when special exceptions need to be
made for names that if one would use the default spelling rules they would
look too much like Hebrew words and therefore people will misread them.

It was an eye-opener; I had thought Yiddish spelling was much more like
gett spelling than it really is. (I had thought the same of Ladino and
Spanish pesaq in Hilkhos Gittin. Could still be true.)

My take is that the AhS would have you spell Harvey hei-reish-vav-vav-yud.

There is no alef after the hei, since only qamatz by default get an alef;
patach only gets an alef if we're forced to a fall-back spelling. We don't
use a veis for the /v/ sounds as double-vav is unambiguous (in most
contexts, again, this may get tweaked in a special case) but veis and beis
are identical. And the chiriq gets a yud.


On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 8:01am EDT, R Ben Rothke continued:
:> The very point I was trying to make is that yes,

: I don't see how you can say there is but one way to transliterate an
: English word into Hebrew.

: If you get a few separate batei dinim, they are unlikely to agree on 1
: spelling. Especially for more complicated names.

As I wrote above (and sent you before this 2nd email of yours)...
There are dinim about how to transliterate. There are many possible
transliterations of a name, but halakhah recommends one over the others.

I told you where to look. Take a look for yourself.

The only time deparate batei dinim would come up with different spellings
is if there is a debate about which accent is dominant or how to divide
English sounds among the established transliterations.

"Harvey" is easy. Not like "John", with that /dzh/ thing for the
"j". Russian names, with that sound that somewhere between a tzadi and
an English "ch".

The "-l" suffix in Yiddish nicnames posed an issue the AhS has to deal
with repeatedly. If the ending is emphasized, then it's yud-lamd, if it's
not, then it's just lamed. IOW, is the person usually called "Yentel" or
"Yentl". And if she is cause both, depending on who is talking... that's
where I could see debate.

Or the Russian softened vowels, with that /y/ like lead-in. Do you
transliterate Lyuba or Luba, when the yud sound is barely there, or only
said by some who know her?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Take time,
micha at aishdas.org        be exact,
http://www.aishdas.org   unclutter the mind.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Alter of Kelm