Convictions: Slate's blog on legal issues

When Barry Became ... Baruch?

For your latest entry in the seemingly non-stop barrage of fawning Barack Obama major-media coverage, look no further than Newsweek's latest cover, which offers "When Barry Became Barack."

All very interesting, I suppose.  But while Newsweek's on the subject, I'd be interested to learn about "Baruch Obama."  That's the version that Eleanor Kerlow repeatedly used in Poisoned Ivy, her 1994 review of Harvard Law School's troubled late-1980s, early-1990s days.

Perhaps one of my Convictions colleagues -- or one of our readers -- can clear this up for me:  Did Barack actually go by "Baruch" at some point in time?  If so, why did he change it to "Barack"?  The Newsweek piece never mentions "Baruch."

I suspect that, in fact, he never used the name "Baruch," and that Kerlow made a mistake.  (In the 1990 volume of the Harvard Law Review, for example, he's listed as "Barack Obama.")  Then again, I've long thought that Kerlow's entire book was a mistake.