Chaim

Chaim — חיים — is the Hebrew word for life, grammatically plural as though life were always more than a single thing. It underpins the Jewish toast l'chaim, to life, and has been carried by rabbis, novelists, and statesmen, among them Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, and the Nobel laureate Chaim Potok. One guttural syllable in Hebrew, opened with the throaty ch English speakers often render as H. The name remains deeply common in Ashkenazi communities and modern Israel. Chaim feels warm and affirming, a name that says yes to the fact of being here, plural in its meaning and intimate in its sound.