The Greeks, so they told me, generally don’t celebrate birthdays as we do, but instead go in for “name days”. This uses the calendar of feast days for Greek (as opposed to Roman Catholic) saints: the day for St. John the Baptist a.k.a. Iannos Prodromos (“John the Forerunner”)would be January 6th, I believe, and not June 23 as in the RC calendar (which I thnk the Epsicopalians also use). This way, everyone knows when your name day is and comes to your place to congratulate you. And of course, you entertain them. I guess this works well enough, except that more and more Greeks are recieving names which are classical in origin rather than Biblical: Socrates, Pericles, and so on, rather than Nicholas, Iannos, and things like that. And then there are names that I can’t imagine the origin of, like Liani. I asked what they do name-day-wise for a guy named Pericles and didn’t get an answer. Maybe celebrating name-days is a dying tradition? I also asked for a list of name-days (i.e. September 16 is so-and-so’s day, etc.), and no one could find one for me. Do the Philhellenics among the teeming millions have any info on these questions?
Here is a link for you. Need to specify by month.
www.earthcalendar.net/countries/namedays/greeknamedays.html
Mexicans celebrate name days, usually with even more circumstance than birthdays, which they also celebrate.
Some vague thoughts I am making up as I type them… I believe it is common in Mediterranean countries, not only Greece but Italy and Spain, that a person have a special veneration for the saint of his name and consider that saint his patron and would celebrate the day of the year when that saint was venerated.
I believe there was also some idea that giving a child the name of a certain saint was in some way putting him under the protection and guidance of the saint so it would be normal that,as the person grew up, he would come to venerate the saint and celebrate the saint’s feast day.
Scandinavians do it too! Here’s a calendar.
All it is these days is, I think, just an excuse for a couple extra treats at breakfast or at the office. Unless the native Swedes on the board know better.
[note: I fixed the link. -manhattan]
[Edited by manhattan on 09-15-2000 at 04:45 PM]
The French do it, too.
Tangentially: There was a very long time in which the French government would not allow you to have a first name that was not on the calendar. I believe this was an attempt to enforce a state religion/code-of-civility on the people or to increase conversion. In the case of the Bretons, I think it was particularly enforced to destroy their culture which was not “typically French” (see Asterix & Obelix). (I suspect that it wasn’t as bad as Kunte Kinte being forced to change his name, but I beleive that imprisonment was possible if you overtly and repeatedly tried to name your kid something like “Chastity” or “Moon Unit”. You certainly couldn’t get a birth certificate without using a calendar name.)