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Keila and Kelila - traditional names?
I thought Keila was a modern made-up name. But, looking at an online list of burials of London's Great Synagogue, I notice that it turned up again and again in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Hebrew/Yiddish names of women who normally went by the name Catherine.
Amazed, I looked it up and saw that it is, apparently, the Yiddish form of the Hebrew Kelila, "crown of laurel" But, if this is so, where does Kelila occur - the Bible or other sacred literature? It's certainly a comparatively obscure name. And is it pronounced kehLEEla or kehLIEla? I assume Keila's Yiddish pronunciation is Kayla.
Thanks for any help!Now, I wonder what would please her,
Charlotte, Julia, or Louisa?
Ann and Mary, they're too common;
Joan's too formal for a woman;
Jane's a prettier name beside;
But we had a Jane that died.
They would say, if 'twas Rebecca,
That she was a little Quaker.
From poem [1809] by Charles Lamb
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