About My Name

The name Max is derived from the Latin maximus, “greatest”; this name was borne by many figures in ancient Roman and subsequent history. Today Max is often short for Maximilian, Maxwell or Maxim, but in my case Max is my full given name.

Gabriel is my middle name, coming from the Hebrew גבריאל Gaḇrīʼēl, “man of God”. It is a biblical name; the archangel Gabriel is regarded as a divine messenger in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

My surname is Liberman (pronounced /ˈlɪbəɹmən/ – that is, with the first two syllables as in “liberty”). This name is of Yiddish origin: ליבערמאן, “dear, beloved or kind man”. Lieberman and Liebermann are variant spellings of what is essentially the same name.

In practice, I rarely use Gabriel as part of my name. For many years, however, I’ve used mgliberman, with both first and middle initials, as an online identifier or username – whence the domain name for this site, mgliberman.net.