Nouns as names

sanctanomina Personal stories

I just read this post on Swistle’s blog — though the parents’ naming style (nouns with non-Catholic-specific meanings) isn’t one I would use for my own kids (I just gotta have a connection to the faith), I do love their style and creativity. Their girls’ names are Haven and Lark; their little boy is Tusker; they’re looking for suggestions for their fourth baby, a boy.

It got me to thinking about nouns (on the unusual side — not Grace, Faith, etc.) that would fit within the narrow style discussed on this blog, and I came up with three off the top of my head:

Vesper

Emmaus

Tiber

I’ve heard Vesper used for a girl (it refers to the evening star, or the evening, but in the Catholic world it refers to evening prayers) (beware of secular references though, like one of the Bond girls); I’ve never heard Emmaus used as a personal name, though I imagine it as a boy’s name (like Emmett) (Jesus met some of His disciples on the road to Emmaus, a town close to Jerusalem, after the Resurrection); I’ve never heard Tiber as a name either, but I have heard of Tiberius (the name of a Roman emperor; Trekkies will recognize it! [Captain James Tiberius Kirk]) (the Tiber is a river that runs through Rome; converts to Catholicism say they’ve “crossed the Tiber”).

I also think Boon (meaning benefit, favor) as mentioned on the Swistle post might fit here, especially for namers who are on the far-out end of the Catholic naming spectrum.

What do you think of Vesper, Emmaus, Tiber, and Boon? What nouns can you think of that would satisfy a Catholic naming sensibility?

9 thoughts on “Nouns as names”

  1. Loving diving into your blog! I am a childless Swistle fan, so when Simcha linked to you earlier, I clicked right over.

    There are some place names that are so common we forget they are nouns, like Sharon, Bethany, and Jordan. Even Abbey (have a coworker named this as a full name).

    What about some uncommon but used ones, like Eden or Trinity or Lourdes? Bell could work, too.

    The rest I could think of seemed too fringe:
    Litany?
    Balsam? http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=32069
    Pieta?

    None of those at least feel feasible to me, and I had a long conversation defending the name “Ebenezer” at Christmas.

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