Damn Israeli Names!

Browsing around Yahoo! Sports earlier, I saw a blog post on The Dagger. This was no ordinary post. It was about an incoming freshman set to play on a D-I basketball team. Yes, he is going to play for the Florida Gators, but so what? Tens of freshmen have been doing that for decades now. What's so special about this new guy? His first name is Nimrod. You heard right, Nimrod. The word that in slang English means "a simpleton; a nerd." according to Dictionary.com. Poor kid. Not only is he going to live in a completely different country, 7 time zones from his native of Israel, but he has to deal with the heckling of drunken college students (and alumni) every game about his odd name.
Having an odd name by American standards is nothing new. Trust me. I have one too. It means running in the past tense. Not only that, but it gets mispronounced daily because its pronunciation is closer to "Ron" but because of the different accents in Hebrew and English my parents along with many other ones, spelled it Ran. But back to Nimrod. My advice would be this: embrace your name, background, and culture. So what if some dumb drunk SEC folks are going to try and abuse you? They will find other reasons to do it anyways because your their opponent. Just remember, their American names are just as odd to you as yours is to them. You just happen to live amongst them for the next four years or so. If anything, you will get a lot of support from the Israeli and Jewish community down in Florida, just like how other Israeli athletes get when they come to compete in the states. I've seen it here in person at UCLA and in the media for other schools.
I know it must be odd to a UCLA student and fan to give any sort of positive advice or feel sympathetic towards a player at a school that prevented UCLA from getting numbers 12 and 13, but sometimes we have to put aside our differences and find our similarities. However, if UCLA does play Florida at any point in the tournament, you can be sure I will try to be at the game to heckle Nimrod Tishman in Hebrew all game long, it just won't really about about his name, that'd be hypocritical.