Many of the earliest Zionists who first came to Israel - and actually I think this practice is still going on - Hebraicized their name.
I wonder what exactly their reasons were - or where did they get the idea from? And how unusual is this practice in history generally? Obviously, there is also a culture of converts to Islam changing their names - Muhammed Ali had the whole thing with the "slave name" - and various other people have changed their names in history for different reasons, but I'm interested if and when anyone rationalized this practice?
It has been very common for Irish Republicans to change their names to Irish since the late 19th century. This was linked to attempts to revive the language from that time on. There are several cases of people whose names are not remotely Irish such as John Stevens who became Sean MacStiofan and helped found the Provisional IRA. Roy Foster's new book looks at the relationship between the revolutionary generation of the early 20th century and the language.