Yes. Or so says this site. Which, I guess, might just be trying to drum up business among the Jews. Anyway, here’s the relevant piece of the text:
The Wild Things (except “Goat Boy”, of course) were named after (and are presumably caricatures of) Maurice’s aunts and uncles: Aaron, Bernard, Emil, Moishe and Tzippy.
Careful, people, there really is an international conspiracy. And it’s roaring its terrible roar, gnashing its terrible teeth, and rolling its terrible eyes.
(Also, if you’re interested, there’s this.)
The Edge of the American West 
51 comments
December 17, 2008 at 7:38 am
rhulvictorian
Well, I never knew that. Very interesting. Also there are Jews in space.
December 17, 2008 at 7:40 am
ari
They’re everywhere, I tell you.
December 17, 2008 at 7:57 am
kid bitzer
“The original concept for the book featured horses instead of monsters. Sendak said he switched when he discovered that he could not draw horses.”
i think somebody be pullin somebody’s leg.
but the alternative universe in which this turned into sendak’s ‘where the wild horses are’, and max meets misty of chincoteague, my spotty appaloosa, and sparkle bright the pony with her mane blowing free, would have been pretty funny.
sparkle bright, with her mane blowing free, and the flesh of human infants stuck in her teeth.
December 17, 2008 at 8:29 am
bitchphd
That’s kind of awesome, and at the same time, kind of “duh.”
December 17, 2008 at 8:36 am
ari
Like you know from Jews, shiksa. But yeah, kind of obvious.
December 17, 2008 at 8:39 am
bitchphd
Well, I mean, I hadn’t thought about it, what with not knowing anything about Jews. But of *course*, reading it, it becomes obvious.
Mr. B. has a stuffed Bernard.
December 17, 2008 at 8:41 am
Jonathan Dresner
i think somebody be pullin somebody’s leg.
No, I’ve seen interviews with Sendak in which he explains this very clearly. (and also says, yes, that the Wild Things were modeled on his aunts and uncles, who do happen to have been Jewish) Though the horse sketches they showed looked good to me, they clearly didn’t meet Sendak’s self-imposed standards.
I don’t think it would have been “misty of chincoteague, my spotty appaloosa, and sparkle bright the pony” though: he’s had many chances over the years to do work like that, and clearly hasn’t any inclination. His brain didn’t work that way, nor his sense of what held children’s attention.
December 17, 2008 at 8:50 am
ari
Bernard is excellent, though he’s clearly trying to pass. Moishe, by contrast, embraces his Judaism like a…stuffed animal.
December 17, 2008 at 8:55 am
kid bitzer
“I don’t think it would have been “misty of chincoteague, my spotty appaloosa, and sparkle bright the pony” though: he’s had many chances over the years to do work like that, and clearly hasn’t any inclination.”
really? you don’t think that sendak yearned to produce work like sparkle bright the pony? my mistake then; i must have completely misconceived his oeuvre and its aesthetic orientation.
jonathan, are you sure you’re ready to play in this league?
December 17, 2008 at 9:00 am
TF Smith
There was a Simpsons episode where once of the kids encountered “Wild Things”-parodies in a dream and they were stereotypically Jewish (Yiddish and Hebrew commentary, New York accents, etc), so I think this kat is out of the bag.
Doesn’t Max the protagonist kind of give it away, also? Not a lot of WASPs and WASC kids in the ’50s (’60s? When was WTWTA published?) were named Max, I think…weren’t the most popular boys names at the time variations of Mike, Jim, John, etc.?
December 17, 2008 at 9:11 am
davenoon
So is the Wild Rumpus generally associated with Pesach, or does it come at the end of Yom Kippur?
December 17, 2008 at 9:30 am
ari
The wild rumpus is Purim, of course. Sheesh, the goyim.
December 17, 2008 at 9:33 am
ari
Sheesh s/b oy.
December 17, 2008 at 9:43 am
eric
A good piece on Sendak.
December 17, 2008 at 10:40 am
davenoon
Oh, fine. Mock my curiosity about the chosen people.
December 17, 2008 at 10:56 am
Jonathan Dresner
jonathan, are you sure you’re ready to play in this league?
Sure, ’cause I make up my own rules.
December 17, 2008 at 11:08 am
eric s.
Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963. It won the 1964 Caldecott Medal.
Max as a baby’s name reached it’s lowest point in popularity in the 1960s. Max and its variations started to gain new popularity in the late 70s and early 80s.
Coincidence? Yeah, probably.
December 17, 2008 at 11:15 am
Knecht Ruprecht
So is the Wild Rumpus generally associated with Pesach, or does it come at the end of Yom Kippur?
Neither. It’s during Purim, obvs.
December 17, 2008 at 11:25 am
Knecht Ruprecht
Oooh, da pwnage, it huurts.
December 17, 2008 at 11:44 am
bitchphd
Bernard is excellent, though he’s clearly trying to pass.
Pass? With that Jewfro?
Max is back as a popular kids name, by the way, at least for my son’s generation. Not hugely popular, but definitely up there.
December 17, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Jonathan Dresner
The Decline and Return of Max may be related to the Ashkenazi Jewish custom of naming children only after deceased relatives, giving less common names a cyclic quality. That’s how my son ended up as Max: in honor of my paternal grandfather.
December 17, 2008 at 12:53 pm
minneapolitan
giving less common names a cyclic quality
So, nu, where are all the little Isidores, Irvings and Morrises/Maurices?
December 17, 2008 at 12:57 pm
eric s.
We’ll have to chart the name’s popularity after the movie directed by Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel) is released.
December 17, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
There used to be a Wild Things theme-parked thingy for kids in downtown San Francisco.
I was fecking *pissed* when they closed it. My kid was only a year old, and I only got to go to it once…I mean I only got to take him there once.
December 17, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“The Decline and Return of Max may be related to the Ashkenazi Jewish custom of naming children only after deceased relatives, giving less common names a cyclic quality. That’s how my son ended up as Max: in honor of my paternal grandfather.”
That’s Ashkenazi custom? There must be a lot of Irish Catholic Ashkenazis then, ‘cos the same custom holds in Ireland.
December 17, 2008 at 1:24 pm
jazzbumpa
Jewy Jews? Does Lewis Black post here?
Max* took a deep dive from the 1910’s to a Min** in the 60’s then resurged, most impressively, and again is Maxing**.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=MAX&ms=true&sw=m&exact=true
(This link is to a very cool, interactive baby name popularity graphing thingie.)
*The name Max, not any individual named Max.
** Thinly veiled math humor.
December 17, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Jonathan Dresner
So, nu, where are all the little Isidores, Irvings and Morrises/Maurices?
Irving is having a small surge, Isadore is a victim of changing gender ideas I think, and Maurice had a surge in the ’70s and ’80s.
I agree that the NameVoyager is a cute tool (I linked to it above), but it’s still limited to the top thousand names in any given decade, making it harder to track minority-specific names.
December 17, 2008 at 5:13 pm
jazzbumpa
Johnathan –
Didn’t realize you had scooped me on the link. That’s one for you.
December 17, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Jonathan Dresner
The funny thing is, I just found it yesterday (well, actually, found again: I know I’d seen it a year or two ago, but couldn’t remember the site) in response to a family discussion about the frequency of names, including Max’s. Weird how these things come together sometimes.
Now, if I could just figure out a way to use it in a classroom discussion….
December 17, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Galvinji
And it’s not just Max, either. All of the old grandparent names are making a comeback — there are tons of little Sophies and Sadies and Isaacs running around these days.
The Decline and Return of Max may be related to the Ashkenazi Jewish custom of naming children only after deceased relatives, giving less common names a cyclic quality. That’s how my son ended up as Max: in honor of my paternal grandfather.
I am named after my great-grandfather Maurice (pronounced “Morris”) but my parents chose a non “old-fashioned” name beginning with M. These days it is more fashionable than it was thirty or forty years ago to give the kids the “old-fashioned” name (says the man who gave his older daughter a Yiddish name when naming her after his paternal grandmother Betsy).
December 17, 2008 at 8:02 pm
ari
I like the names Max, Sophie, Sadie, and Isaac. Moishe, though, is a bit Jewish — if you see what I mean.
December 17, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Galvinji
Like Herschel Walker? I always wondered how he wound up with that name.
December 17, 2008 at 8:06 pm
ari
Because of Ashkenazi Jewish customs, of course.
December 17, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Galvinji
I always thought he was Sephardic.
December 17, 2008 at 8:20 pm
ari
I always thought he was Sephardic.
You obviously never had his gefilte fish, then. The man could really gefilte a fish. And do push-ups. But not usually at the same time.
December 18, 2008 at 6:51 am
How did we choose that name? Well, we were worried that our first choice, Charles Manson Cambell, might freak people out. « The Edge of the American West
[…] 18, 2008 in nonsense | by ari Speaking of ethnic naming practices, you might want to take a few minutes to read this uplifting tale. Or not. In which case, […]
December 18, 2008 at 12:22 pm
bitchphd
Galvinji’s right. Sophie, Sadie, Emma, Max, Milo, Jacob, Joshua–all reemerging names. I suppose it’s possible that it’s a grandparent-naming thing,* but I honestly think that it’s just part of the generational “retro” trend. PK has one of those old-fashioned weird names, and although I did think it was nice that it echoed my paternal grandfather’s name (Levin), that wasn’t really why I chose it. (The alternative, maternal grandfather name would have been Aduel, btw.)
*Of course, being completely Jew-blind, it never occurred to me that these names, or the grandparent-naming thing, or even the old-fashioned naming thing, were, y’know, Jewish.
December 18, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Galvinji
Galvinji’s right
It makes me very happy to see that in print! Usually people tell me that I’m wrong.
it never occurred to me that these names, or the grandparent-naming thing, or even the old-fashioned naming thing, were, y’know, Jewish
The old-fashioned naming thing certainly isn’t, if my kids’ friends are any indication. And the grandparent-naming thing has to be a dead grandparent, lest the angel of death grab the wrong person (so I’m told).
We, on the other hand, gave our children rather ordinary middle names, so they can go by them if they want.
December 18, 2008 at 8:05 pm
chingona
The old-fashioned name thing is not just Jewish. My son has an old-fashioned name. Of course, I am Jewish, but my husband isn’t, and it was his idea and it’s his grandfather – with the distinctly non-Jewish name of Charles – that our son is named after. It’s old-fashioned enough that the pediatrician (Dr. Goldberg, no less) immediately asked whose grandfather he was named after. Interestingly, if he had been a she, she would have been Sophie, who isn’t any of our grandmothers, but is an old-fashioned name.
Also arguing against the Jewish connection, the resurgence is limited to certain select names. I checked all my grandparents and great aunts and uncles on that name tracker and none of their names have come back. No Seymours. No Florences. No Murrays. No Celias. No Harolds.
December 18, 2008 at 8:09 pm
ari
Charles is an olde-timey name? Who knew?
December 19, 2008 at 5:05 am
tf smith
My spouse is of the Latin/Mediterranean-American community, and the expectation is that the first girl and first boy in each family get the paternal grandparents’ names – hence the huge number of women who turn around at every family gathering when someone says “Maria?” (given the differentials allowed by Antonio, Anthony, and Tony, not so much on the boys side.)
Having also seen a male relative deal with the having his father’s first name – and hence being doomed to the “Big (Dad)” and “Little (Son”) dynamic his entire life, once we decided on a family, we looked hard for English first names that no one on either side going back three generations had ever had…but which also did not sound like they came out of the Old Testament.
Plus, we went for the common English spellings (no Jane with an X, for example, or John with a “silent” Z).
We did stick the offspring with various familial names as their middle names, however.
December 19, 2008 at 6:26 am
Matt W
There must be a lot of Irish Catholic Ashkenazis then, ‘cos the same custom holds in Ireland.
Either you’ve misconstrued the custom or we don’t know the same Irish Catholic families — in the ones I know, the children have the same name as relatives who are still living (e.g., the child has the same name as an uncle, both of whom were named after the father/grandfather). That traditionally doesn’t happen in Ashkenazi families; it’s a horrible insult to give a child the same name as a relative who’s still alive. Like throwing a shoe at them.
December 19, 2008 at 6:36 am
kid bitzer
but only like throwing a shoe at them *in some cultures*!
among irish catholics, this is considered a blessing.
December 19, 2008 at 6:38 am
kid bitzer
may the road rise up to meet you, and may god keep your sole, sort of thing.
December 19, 2008 at 8:33 am
chingona
Charles is an olde-timey name? Who knew?
I didn’t think so either, at the time, but run it through the name tracker. The last time it was popular was the 1930s.
December 19, 2008 at 8:44 am
ari
Weird. I feel like I’m awash in Chucks. But I guess that’s the problem with anecdata.
December 19, 2008 at 8:57 am
chingona
Young Chucks or middle-aged Chucks?
December 19, 2008 at 9:03 am
ari
I suppose that depends on whether I’m young or middle-aged. Crap, they’re middle-aged, aren’t they? Which makes me…
December 19, 2008 at 9:26 am
chingona
If it makes you feel better, when I said young, I meant the two- to four-year-old set.
Charles didn’t go off a cliff. It was a gradual, but steady and so far consistent decline. So it makes sense that you and I would know a fair number of them, but that my kid would be the only one at day-care with that name.
March 25, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Will they be circumcised?* « The Edge of the American West
[…] * See here. […]
March 25, 2009 at 3:30 pm
But will they be circumcised?* « The Edge of the American West
[…] * See here. […]