Why I was baptized with the name I was baptized with :)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hi everybody! This is a little story I told during the Cologne dopefest in April, and I was encouraged by the attending dopers to put it here for everybody to read. So, after my usual delay due to chronic procrastination (yes, it is a totally legit medical condition, I swear!), I submit it here for your approval :stuck_out_tongue:

People wouldn’t know it when they see my rather large frame nowadays, but I was born very premature. My delivery was difficult, I had serious oxygen starvation when I was born, I had to spend many weeks in the incubators… Basically, after I was born, for quite some time everything was rather “touch-and-go”. During the first week of my life nobody was confident as to whether I would live. I guess I was fortunate in that my father was a very gifted doctor and he was the one who delivered me and took personal care of things. A small city in the Spain of the late 1960s was not the place to find top-level medical facilities. I chalk the fact of my survival to the skill, perseverance and bloody-mindedness of my father and his colleagues, who performed miracles with relatively limited means. But I digress…

Anyway – on my 2nd day of life, a priest who was a very good friend of my father paid a visit to the hospital where I was (and where my father was standing watch over me, obviously), and went straight to my father, wherein the following conversation ensued:

Priest: “Pepe, I know what you think (my father was the local “pinko freethinker” and was in a very iffy relationship with the Franco authorities… That would be material for another thread, though), but I don’t care. This child is in danger of death, and he has to be baptized. Allow me to do it.”

My dad: “OK, go ahead.”

Priest: “Very well. How do you want the child to be named?”

My dad: “Name him José, like myself”.

Now, you see… The good priest had the unshakeable conviction that, if there was any Saint in heaven who could help me in those dire straits I was in, it would be the Saint to whom his parish was dedicated: Saint Philip Neri.

The nuns that run the nursing services in that hospital, however, chose that moment to vocally disagree: They had put a small icon of their favorite Saint under my pillow, and it would be him who would intercede for me, not that parvenu of Saint Philip Neri! It would be Saint Martin de Porres!

So, in order to avoid a fist-fight with the nuns in the middle of the incubator room (although it has to be said that such a scene would have been beyond awesome), the priest decided to be diplomatic. Also, he possibly thought that I needed as much help as possible… Anyway, my baptism papers state that my Christian name is…

José Felipe Neri Martín de Porres

I guess that the Saint thing worked, after all…

(And now I am imagining St. Philip Neri and St. Martin de Porres somewhere in the vicinity of the pearly gates, observing the proceedings, and then sighing and going paper-rock-scissors to decide who took care of the case).

2

Or maybe they just paired up, like for dominoes.

If you want to anger my brother Ed, all you have to do is call him by his full baptismal name: Eduardo Manuel. Mom insisted in Eduardo after her father, who was a complete son of a bitch in many ways. While my father didn’t know exactly how bad his FiL was, he refused to accept the name with such a reason unless Manuel was added “to compensate and hopefully keep the child from growing up into some sort of hellspawn”.

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I love this story Jose. Your dad sounds awesome, by the way.

One of my relatives told me that my name, Tania, was chosen by my Abuela after a character in a favorite novella. Another relative told me that’s not true. So now I have no idea where my mom came up with such an unusual (especially in 1956) name for me.

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To me it shows the power and love of God and a great example of how God works. Thanks for sharing.

5

Awesome story.

I have stories behind my names, too, but none of them as interesting as yours!

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I have a memoir called Karen by Marie Killilea. Karen’s little brother was also premature and the nursery’s on-duty nurse took one look when he was brought in and baptized him. She went off-duty and the doctor took one look and did the same. Then a second nurse came in, did the same, and she was followed by a priest summoned by the parents. (Baptize, rinse, repeat…)
The boy wound up named James O’Rourke Thomas Michael Patrick Matthew Killilea.

They called him Rory. And yes, he survived.

7

What a great story!

And a timely thread, too - I was just thinking this morning about how my grandfather got his middle name.

When he was born, his parents didn’t bother to give him one. As a young man, he got a job as a telegraph operator for the railroad. Operators would send their initials after each transmission, so others would know who sent it. And two was not enough – three were required.

Warren G. Harding was president at the time, and he decided if Harding was a good enough name for the president it was good enough for him too. So he went to the town clerk and had it added as his official middle name.

When my dad was born, they passed that name along to him, too.

And that’s how we ended up with the surname of completely unrelated people in our family.