A pregnancy involves many tasks: it changes the routine and diet of the future mother, forces her to go on a pilgrimage to the gynecologist, periodic ultrasound scans must be carried out and the logistics of receiving the future baby are planned, among other things.
Even before we know the sex of the baby, we need to think about what name we are going to give it. From my experience, parents basically have the alternative of resorting to family tradition or looking for a name that follows fashion, also resorting to the lists available on the Internet. In my case, before I was conceived, I had already been assigned the name of my paternal grandfather, the same name that he in turn received from his grandfather, and so it was for my first granddaughter, Francesca.
Until recently, in fact, it was the family, the clan, that decided the name of the baby who was about to be born, also giving him or her the name of the Saint of the day, however rare it was. But now the name is given by the parents, as it should be, through a marital negotiation that is not always easy.
There are names that allow you to guess a person’s age; there are others that reflect admiration for public figures. How many thirtysomethings are there named Juan Manuel, in homage to the great Serrat? I can also bet that this year in the United States many Donalds and Elons will be born, few Josephs and very rare Kamalas. In Italy, the Benito generation is dying out with age, while in Bolivia the name Víctor seems anachronistic and Evo is shameful. In Spain, the Generalissimo imposed that the name of a baptized woman be Mary: María Soledad, María del Pilar, María del Rosario, etc. In this way, María became synonymous with “doña”.
The negotiation I have mentioned sometimes leads to putting double or triple names, as in soap operas. This is not recommended due to the legal and identity issues that arise. Not to mention absurd names, such as Cain (for not having read the Bible carefully) or Hitler and Stalin (for not having studied history), or oddities, such as Snow White and Enchanting, or foreign names that violate spelling, such as Jhony and Theilor.
A couple of years ago, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal presented a bill (Law on Cultural Identity and Name) that allowed you to change your name with a simple procedure. Unfortunately, that bill did not receive attention from the members of the assembly, who were busy making scandals.
In ancient times, naming was a privilege of the “pater familiae,” a further manifestation of patriarchy. In the Bible there are examples of this, as in the case of the Baptist, whose name, John, was imposed on him, against the criteria of the clan, by his father Zechariah (Lk 1:59-64).
This is why it is surprising that, in the account of the Annunciation, the angel says to Mary: ‘You are about to give birth to a son and you will call his name Jesus‘ (Lk 1:31). Mary, not Joseph! I like to read in these words another example of St Luke’s attention, sometimes explicit, sometimes veiled, to the dignity and to the role of women in society, when he recounts the sayings and deeds of Jesus.
In the Bible, giving the name has a profound meaning, that of defining a vocation and a mission. Jesus renames three of his disciples: Simon as Peter, Mary as Magdalene (“the strong woman”) and Saul as Paul, to assign them a mission.
Like those disciples, you, dear reader, and I have two names: the visible one, received from our parents in the civil register or in baptism, and the veiled one that God has always and forever reserved for us. That name is none other than our identity and mission in the world, a name that we are called to learn, even the hard way, in our lives for our full fulfilment.
Merry Christmas!