I was baptized R.C. as an infant, Steve Richard, at the Sacred Heart parish in Tucson, AZ. I have yet to find a St. Steve or a St. Dick. I asked mom what my patron saint was and she didn’t have a clue.
People ask me if I believe in infant baptism. Believe it? I’ve seen it done.
Kunegunda huh? At first I thought it was some afro name. Like the woman on MAD TV : Latifah Sharifah Kunegunda… Jackson. It sounds like a name for someone with a bad attitude
Sua, I hope you realize I was laughing pretty hard at how the whole thing made no sense to me. I do apologize if iI have offended any sensibilities as it was not my intention. I see you agree me though on the substance of the question which is that having a nice name is not a requirement for admission to the great kingdom.
Another thought: Many “so-called”, “allegedly”, “Christian” names are from the Old Testament and are, therefore of people who are not saints.
Padeye, you have not looked very hard as I believe there may be more than one saint by each of those names. There are of course Saint Steven who was a martyr, and St Richard
At the time my sister was born, my Mom was Catholic. She named my sister Wendy Jo, but the priest didn’t like that much so her baptismal certificate says Wendelina Josephina.
All us siblings are eternally greatful to the priest, without whom we would have had to rexort to making fun of her braces.
Except you’d be called Wong Christopher, since in China the family name comes first. That’s why Mao Zedong is called “Mao”, his wife was “Madame Mao”. Mao is his family name, Zedong is his given name. And of course there’s the infamous pair, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Their family name is Kim, like half of all Koreans.
Often asian immigrants will change the name order to american practices. In high school I remember Korean siblings. The older was called Ha Lee (Lee, from the family Ha), the younger Hoon Ha (Hoon, from the family Ha). He’d had his name switched, but his older sister hadn’t. But of course no one at school understood this, and called her “Ha” and thought “Lee” was her last name.
My friend who is a Germanophile (married to a German woman, and goes there all the time, raves about how “orderly” it is, etc.) tells me that if you have a kid over there and want to name it --register it with the authorities, like so much else— you must use a proper German name from an approved proper German name list. I believe he wanted to use his wife’s maiden name as the kid’s middle name, like is sometimes done in the English world (Richard Milhouse Nixon, etc.). The authorities weren’t going to buy that. I don’t know if that was just Bavaria, or if it applies to the whole damn country. Perhaps you all can shed some light on this. If it is somehow has to do with Christian/Saint/Old Testament names, then why do they have names like “Astrid”, “Dieter”, etc.?
I remember an American woman who lives in Spain and had a son and was trying to give him the name John and was having the biggest bureacratic fight over it because they said John in Spanish is Juan so we’ll put is as Juan and she said “no, that won’t do, I don’t want to call him Juan, I want to call him John” and the guy said “no, you can’t do that because here we don’t speak English, we speak Spanish, and John in Spanish is Juan but you can call him John at home if you like when you are speaking English”.
The guy must have been a total idiot because he said she could use Jon, or Jhon because they have no Spanish equivalent but not John.
As sailor has noted (and for the correct reasons), there is no law requiring that a person be named after a saint.
As Cessandra’s example has provided, of course, there are any number of bureaucratic, ill-informed priests who wish to impose this tradition as law. (My favorite story is of some ethnic French or German priest who was figuratively torn limb from limb by one of my great-great aunts for trying to deny her son the name Cornelius because the priest was not going to let her use the name of one of those “heathen Irish gods.” After she gave the priest a lesson in history and hagiography and threatened to tell his good Irish bishop just what sort of nonsense was being imposed on their good Irish congregation, my great uncle Con got baptized Cornelius.)
The tradition (not law) is a very strong one–and has been imposed on peoples of other cultures in a number of cases.
Cessandra-
YOu said Michelle Elizabeth, with Elizabeth being your saint’s name.
I believe Michelle would count too, since it is the feminine version of Michael.
Actually, I think CONFIRMATION names have to be saints…
I’m not going to say for certain it’s a law ( although I suspect it is a law that at least one name be a saint’s name - otherwise,they probably would have referred to my daughter by her first name at baptism, rather than her middle one), but if it is, a lot of variation would be allowed. After all, I’m sure in Italy, St Robert Bellarmine would be called San Roberto , and Matt is a derivative of Matthew.The idea that it can’t be canon law because all Catholics would then have to be named Peter, Paul or Mary is definitely incorrect. To say something is required by canon law is not the same as saying it has been required since the beginning of the church.
JCHeckler: The law in Germany regarding names is country-wide. The law states that you have to give your child a first name that is recognized as a first name somewhere in the world. There may be a list of names, but it is not complete. If you can show that a names is used as a first name by some culture or society, then you can give your child that name. A German friend of mine picked a Maori name to give her child, and this is legal, even though the name may be totally unused in Germany. You cannot simply make up a name that is not used anywhere. I think it is not possible to give a last name as a first name unless it is a commonly used first name as well. So “Jackson” can probably be used, even though it may originally have been a family name, because enough children in the US now have Jackson as a first name.
Was there a Saint Mercedes? I clearly remember a young lady confirmed in the same batch as myself choosing (and getting) that confirmation name. On the other hand, your confirmation name is usually considered the name of your patron saint (mine is Francis, if you’re wondering), so a saint’s name might be required for confirmation. Also, the confirmation name is only likely to be used religiously, unlike the baptism name, so it’s not too much of a restriction.
sailor, the notable Old Testament figures are considered saints; it’s just not conventional to refer to them as such. The official definition of “saint” is any person (not necessarily human, viz St. Michael) who is in Heaven. Cannonization is just the Church’s way of officially saying that there is no shadow of a doubt that a person is, in fact, in Heaven, and the count is almost certainly grossly understated. Incidentally, this also makes the expression “living saint” a bit of an oxymoron.
>> the notable Old Testament figures are considered saints
You mean they are in heaven? You mean Heaven is full of jews? How can catholics possibly allow this?
Mercedes, ah, here is a name I know something about. But first let me say that in Spanish almost any name can be made religious. I once met a woman named Africa and when I made the comment that it was unusual to be named after a continent she explained she was actually named after Our Lady of Africa. If you think about it many mexican names (guadalupe, etc) fall into this category. Take any geographical name, or any other name for that matter, and say Our Lady of X and you’ve got yourself a name which no one can deny is profoundly religious.
Anyway, Mercedes in (old) Spanish means something like favor so, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes is Our Lady of Favors (I am sure there is a better word than favor but I can’t think of it). I guess she is the one to pray to when you need that special favor. The name Mercedes is Very common in Spain but I believe it is in the NW region of Cataluña where this virgin has special veneration. In fact she may be the patron of Cataluña. I believe her festivity is September 24 (if I am not mistaken). I also remember vaguely Saint George is also especially venerated there.
Some German named his daughter Mercedes and that’s how we have a car with that name.
Other common names in Spanish which are different advocations of the Virgin mary are Dolores (Sorrow), Rosario (Rosary), Guadalupe (Place), Pilar etc
That is worded so vaguely it can be interpreted any way you want. it can be interpreted to mean you have to use a saint’s name or it can be interpreted to mean Satan is OK (after all, Satan is not only not foreign to Christian sentiment, he is an integral part of it)
Around here (Puerto Rico), the “christian” or “first” name used to be referred to as “nombre de pila”, literally “name of the font”, referring to the baptismal font. And generally it included one or two names. In recent years we have fallen prey to the Plague of Made-Up Names, specially among girls. (Yeidarith? Anailimee?)
And yes, all the great figures from the OT are considered “saints” by the Catholic and Orthodox churches.