Name day

A Swedish calendar page from February 1712 with name days listed. Note that in Sweden, February 1712 had 30 days.

In Christianity, a name day is a tradition in many countries of Europe and the Americas, among other parts of Christendom.[1] It consists of celebrating a day of the year that is associated with one's baptismal name, which is normatively that of a biblical character or other saint.[2] Where they are popular, individuals celebrate both their name day and their birthday in a given year.[3]

The custom originated with the Christian calendar of saints: believers named after a saint would celebrate that saint's feast day. Within Christianity, name days have greater resonance in areas where the Christian denominations of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Orthodoxy predominate.[1]

In some countries, however, name-day celebrations do not have a connection to explicitly Christian traditions.[4][5]

  1. ^ a b "When Is Your Name Day (Namenstag)?". Humboldt American Press. 8 March 2021. Retrieved 25 February 2022. Sweden, a mostly Protestant Lutheran country, is still into celebrating name days (namnsdagar). And various countries have their own name day calendars. In Latvia, for instance, where your name day is still more important than your birthday, even normal daily calendars indicate the Latvian name days. (Sweden is the same.)
  2. ^ Pinxten, Rik; Dikomitis, Lisa (2009). When God Comes to Town: Religious Traditions in Urban Contexts. Berghahn Books. p. 70. ISBN 978-1-84545-554-5. The factor that contributes decisively to the recognition in Greece of the importance of the name day part from the religious parameters, is the name itself, 'the baptismal name' (vaptistiko) and the consequent symbolic power that the name wields in the identification and placing of the individuall in society as a result of bearing the saint's name (Oikonomidis 1962).
  3. ^ Hann, Chris; Goltz, Hermann (27 May 2010). Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective. University of California Press. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-520-26056-6.
  4. ^ Sophie Koulomzin (1980), Many Worlds: A Russian Life, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, ISBN 978-0-913836-72-9
  5. ^ Anne R. Kaplan; Marjorie A. Hoover; Willard Burgess Moore (1986), The Minnesota Ethnic Food Book, Minnesota Historical Society, ISBN 978-0-87351-198-8