Year: 2015

Nicknames: Ways to get to Sy/Cy

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I’ve been seeing the nickname Sy pop up here and there recently, which has reminded me that I know a boy nicknamed Cy, and it’s kind of stuck with me — it’s feeling really cool to me, and a nice way to manage a heavier or very long given name.

I really liked the suggestion of Sy as a nickname for Sylvester, Silas, Simon, Cyrus, and even Cedric. The Cy I know is Cyril I think, and this suggests it as a nickname for Seymour and this suggests it as a nickname for Josiah. Another possibility is Sidney.

What do you all think of Sy/Cy? Do you know anyone called this, and if so what’s his given name?

Repeating Mary

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I loved reading all your comments yesterday!! One of the things that rose to the top for me is how many of you know of families, or are such families, who have used Mary or one of its forms for more than one daughter:

  • “The obstetrician that delivered me had a very large, very Catholic family, and had six or seven daughters all named Mary. Of course, they weren’t JUST named Mary, they were Mary X, but one of them was Mary Mary!”
  • “my stepsis’s were named after Mary (THE Mary) whereas I am named after my mother (who was also named after Mary) … My mom (Mary)’s only sister’s name is.. Rosemary”
  • “One of my sets of girl cousins in the same nuclear family all have the middle name Marie”
  • “all of my sisters and I have Marie/Mary in our names”
  • “I have two cousins who are sisters, and one is named Danielle Marie and the other is Rosemarie Elizabeth”
  • Another family with seven daughters that have among them Mary twice and Marie once
  • “a friend explained to me that it’s a tradition in the Philippines to name all of your daughters Mary and have them all go by their middles instead”
  • “each of our sweet baby girls have a “form” of Mary in their name”

Woo! Mother Mary FTW!

It reminded me the family one of you readers introduced me to the other day from the Five Marys Farms in California, which is so named because, yes, Mom and all four daughters are named Mary:

Mary Regan (Mom)
MaryFrances
MaryMarjorie
MaryJane
MaryTeresa

The daughters all go by nicknames, which are adorable!

I know I’ve said it a million times before, but my paternal grandmother and her sister were both Mary ____ and went by their middle names; all six of my dad’s female first cousins on his mom’s side (from two different families) are Mary ____ and go by their middle names; and my three sisters and I all have a Marian name as either our first or middle.

I never tire of hearing about Marian names, or different ways of working Mary into a name, or families with lots of Mary names … I love them all!

Repeating names

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Yesterday’s post about the Campos-Duffy family prompted me to look more into what people think about repeating names among siblings. If you remember, they used Pilar (one of my fave Marian names!) as a middle name for three of their girls, and Margarita as a middle for one girl and a first name for another. I’m just noticing too that they used Jack as a middle and John-Paul as a first (it’s the John connection that I’m finding interesting between them).

I think the majority opinion is that names shouldn’t be repeated? Grace (Camp Patton) once said, “Simon came up with Xavier as the middle name and I wish we’d saved that for a first name because I love that name as well.” In the Name Lady’s Can I Recycle a Middle Name post she describes it as “not an ideal situation,” though she also acknowledges that it’s not “totally out of bounds,” and “In fact, quite a few parents give in and reuse older kids’ middle names. You never know it, because they carefully avoid mentioning their children’s middle names at all.” (I would find that so hard! I love each firstname-middlename combo my hubs and I came up with for our boys — I’d hate to feel like I had to “carefully avoid mentioning their … middle names at all”!)

I know a few people who gave multiple children the same middle name — one family gave all the girls the middle name Marie, and two other families I know gave two daughters the middle name Catherine (but not all the daughters). There does seem to be a difference between giving all your children, or all your children of the same gender, the same middle name vs. only giving some children the same name and not the others.

The mumsnet thread Would you reuse a middle name as a subsequent childs first name? brought up several potential issues with reusing names — both using one child’s first name as another’s middle, and even repeating first names:

  • “many people have said to me that in the future DD1 may resent the fact that DD2 “took” part of her name. Or DD2 may resent being “named after” DD1″
  • “I personally wouldn’t do it, although the middle name we’re about to use is gorgeous and I would love to use it as first name, but I don’t want to hold it in reserve in case I don’t end up having another child to use it on!”
  • “I know a guy who is named (first name, middle name, surname) after his older brother who died from SIDS! That’s V weird!” and “I do know a boy who has the same name as his brother, who was stillborn sad and I know somebody who is pg who already have a DD but they are expecting a DS, and they are going to give him the same middle name as their DD’s middle name!”

I was particularly intrigued by the second bulletpoint — I think a lot of people might load up all their fave names at the front end of their family because of not knowing how many they’ll have of one gender — or how many kids they’ll be blessed with overall — and not wanting to miss out on using a beloved name.

Regarding the third bulletpoint, in the old days reuse of names from older deceased child to younger sibling seems to have been somewhat common. Genealogy.com says that,

“Up until this century, parents could usually count on one third of their children not surviving. If a child died, the name was often used again. If a baby died, the next child of the same sex would often be given the same name. When checking birth records, you should never stop when you find the name you are looking for. You should continue for a few more years, because the first child could have died and your ancestor could have been the second child in the family with that name. If an older child died, a younger one would often be named for him or her. If you see George in the 1850 census as a six year old and then in the 1860 census as an eight year old, it may mean the first one died shortly after the 1850 census was taken.”

And we’ve seen how at least one Catholic royal family reused names with abandon, and not necessarily because of infant/child death.

I’m not sure what I think about the first bulletpoint. Probably that kids (big and little, adult and not) get in a huff about a million things that parents don’t think they will, and don’t get upset about things parents were sure they would … if I’d chosen to do this with names, my approach would probably just be to be sure to always positively talk about the choice we’d made — make a big deal about how wonderfully meaningful it was meant to be and a choice given in love — so at least if the kids hated it later, they would know it wasn’t done to upset them. And then pray for the best!

I’m also thinking that sometimes, as with one of the families I know that used Catherine as a middle name for two of their daughters, the reasons for using it were different each time — which then sort of makes it like two different names being used: one daughter was named after St. Catherine of Siena, and the other was named after Grandma Catherine. I myself would have used the name once and been pleased with the double honor, but that’s just my personal preference — I can definitely see it seeming like two different names in this scenario, even though it looks and sounds the same. It kind of ties into what Abby wrote in one of my favorite of her posts, The Secret Meaning of Names:

“Some of the best names have backstories that are unique to the family in question. Mallory doesn’t mean sorrowful if your parents met in Mallory, Indiana. Then it means “small town where my parents met.” And if your parents happened to meet there because it was a dark and stormy night, and your mom had a flat tire and the repair shop was closed and your dad just happened to be in town for a meeting and suddenly, there they were nursing coffee at the Mallory Diner just one seat apart … well, then your name means “serendipity, twist of fate.””

And it ties into what I wrote in my Nameberry post Good-Intention Baby Naming: “The intention behind the bestowing of the name can be as important—or more so—than the name’s actual origin or meaning or other specifics.”

In the case of the Campos-Duffys, their repeating of names is so exuberant — one of you used the word “confident,” which was so great — that it really strikes me as not that strange at all. And the gorgeousness and saintliness of the names they chose makes me think of that royal names post — each one is sort of decadent and fabulous, really beautiful choices.

What do you all think? Would you (have you?) use one child’s middle name for another’s first name? What about other types of repeating — using the same middle name for all the children, or all one gender, or the names of lost babies (miscarried/stillborn/died when they were older) being given to younger siblings?

Famous Catholics: Campos-Duffy

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I’ve been meaning to update this post since I discovered little Campos-Duffy #7’s name back in the spring, and kept forgetting to do so … but today’s your lucky day!! 🙂 She’s the beautifully named … [drumroll] … Margarita Pilar!

I’m very interested that it’s the third time Sean and Rachel have used Pilar as a middle name, and the second time they’ve used Margarita (first as a middle, now as a first). Either way, it’s beautiful and saintly and heavy hitting! She’s one blessed (and beautiful!) little girl! (And other than Rachel’s Twitter, I think it’s very possible you’re hearing it here first, because even her Wiki page only notes the birth of a daughter, it doesn’t list her name.)

sanctanomina's avatarSancta Nomina

Ok, so I don’t know a whole heckuva lot about Rachel Campos-Duffy and her husband Sean. I do know:
— They met on MTV’s Road Rules All Stars in 1998
— Sean’s a congressman (Wisconsin’s seventh district)
— He’s one of eleven children
— They gave their children super duper Catholic names:

Evita Pilar
Xavier Jack
Lucia-Belen
John-Paul
Paloma Pilar
MariaVictoria Margarita

They reportedly recently welcomed baby #7 (a girl!), but I haven’t been able to find out the new baby’s name. Anyone?

Read more:
Rachel Campos-Duffy Expecting Baby No. 7
Wisconsin congressman welcomes baby number 7
Rep. Sean Duffy and Rachael Campos-Duffy welcome seventh child into the world

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Baby name consultant: A little football, a little Catholic baby naming

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I had a little mix-up about today’s scheduled consultation, so I’m going to post this one instead, which I’ve been working on recently. (Yes, I do spend my free time doing things like this. I’m a little bit crazy.)

One of my husband’s biggest disappointments regarding his lovely wife is that I don’t like football. Which isn’t even entirely true — what I don’t like is that when “the game’s on!” (football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, golf ………………) there’s a lot of ignoring-of-wife. Also, game losses=bad-mood husband. Also, no one can watch anything else because the game’s on! I’m sure some of you know what I mean.

Sports in general I’m a big fan of (though more as a player than a watcher), and I think participating and watching are both great ways to spend one’s time (a lot better than some other things right?). Re: football, I also profess to be a Giants fan because my dad is a Giants fan (daddy’s girl and all). (My husband says I’m not allowed to call myself a Giants fan though because I decided to go to bed with two minutes left in the game during that SuperBowl that the Giants were in, which I couldn’t even remember which one it was so I just texted my hubs and he said: “Super Bowl 42 in 2008. Giants beat the Patriots 17-14 on a crazy last minute drive to beat the previously undefeated Pats (19-0 heading into the game) … And you went to bed.”)

Anyway! All that to say, despite my rocky relationship with football, I’m a huge fan of Chargers QB Philip Rivers. Huge fan! I admit I’ve never watched him play (I probably wouldn’t even know it was the Chargers unless it was pointed out to me. Because I’d probably have my nose in book. I’m such a disappointing wife!), BUT I do know these things about him:

NFL Quarterback Philip Rivers on Faith, Family & Football (by the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word)

Tiffany Rivers, Philip’s Wife: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know (including their commitment to premarital abstinence, Natural Family Planning, and having a big family)

Touchdown: Chargers QB Philip Rivers welcomes seventh baby (nothing more to say 🙂 )

Catholic in the NFL: An Interview with Philip Rivers (on Life Teen’s blog) (“If you’re going to be a Catholic man, be it all the way“) (“Thanks so much for taking the time today to talk, is there anything that you would like prayers for? Yeah, I can give you many intentions, but I’d certainly be humbled if you prayed for my family and for all the unborn.”)

Catholic Quarterback Philip Rivers Passes On the Faith (National Catholic Register) (the whole article’s the bomb — the Eucharist, favorite saints, the Miraculous Medal, purity)

NFL Star Philip Rivers Tells Catholic University Grads to Never Give Up (he got married and had his first baby while in college)

Philip Rivers — Life on the Rock — Faith, Family, Football (fantastic 52-minute segment from EWTN’s Life on the Rock show, posted on his buddy Jason Evert’s Chastity Project site [which is itself an awesome awesome resource]) (it starts with an opening bit about the sacraments, and Philip comes on around the 8:30 mark)

Challenges ahead for Chargers’ Philip Rivers, but he has faith (“… in May, when the San Diego Chargers quarterback and his extended family visited the Vatican and were in a crowd of thousands for a Wednesday papal audience. Rivers, a devout Catholic, had a prime spot in the crowd and was holding the youngest of his six children, Pete, who will turn 2 in October … “I was about 10 yards away, and the crowd kind of opened up,” Rivers said. “Pope Francis just kind of motioned like, ‘Bring him to me.’ Pete was like, ‘No! What are you doing?!” But we passed him to the pope. It was awesome. The pope kissed him, blessed him. We got great pictures of it.””) (“Real life can be tougher. Rivers and his wife, Tiffany, got that reminder after the season when their 5-year-old son, Gunner, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.”)

I mean, come on. Especially for me as a mom of six boys, Philip Rivers is absolutely the kind of man I’m happy to know is out there, saying things publicly that I want my boys to hear, living a counter-cultural life that’s not hidden.

And happy news! Philip and his wife are expecting their eighth baby — a girl! They have five other girls:

Halle
Caroline
Sarah
Grace
Rebecca

And two boys:

Peter
Gunner

I do love to try to predict what name(s) I think expectant parents might choose, based on the names they’ve already chosen (and what kind of Catholic baby name blogger would I be if I didn’t have some ideas for Philip Rivers!), so using my trusty Baby Name Wizard book and my gut feeling about their taste, I came up with some names that I thought seemed to hit all the right notes:

(1) Sofie (or Sophie)

Halle and Gunner really jumped out from the list of their kiddos’ names — I thought that maybe they didn’t seem to quite fit with the other kids’ names? But when I remembered that the spelling Halle can be Scandinavian (I tend to think of it as more mainstream than ethnic, what with all the Hailey/Hallie/Hayley variants, but Halle is a legit Norwegian name on its own, albeit a male name), and Gunnar (that spelling) is Scandinavian as well, I thought maybe that was the key there. We’d actually considered Gunnar as a middle for one of our boys — it’s a family name on our Norwegian side, and we liked the uber-masculine feel of the sound of it, which we would have said like Gunner (even though I’m pretty sure the Scandi pronunciation is more like goo-NAR?) — so with all that in mind, I really paid attention to the suggestions given in the BNW as similar to Gunnar, and Sofie leapt off the page. That spelling — Sofie — is the Scandinavian spelling, and the Sophia/Sophie names are so similar to the style of Caroline and Grace specifically (and it’s a virtue-type name, like Grace), that it seemed like a really great pick for the Rivers. I really like the Sofie spelling for them because I think it helps loop Halle and especially Gunner in even more with whole group, but I don’t mind the Sophie spelling. (And i could be totally wrong about the whole Scandinavian-Halle-Gunnar/Gunner thing.)

(2) Julia

One of my favorite things is looking at a sib set with names of different styles and trying to find names that bridge the styles. Julia is one such for the Rivers family. It was listed as a style match for Caroline and Grace, and it’s biblical like Sarah, Rebecca, and Peter. And it’s got a pan-European feel — and is indeed used in the Scandinavian countries — which goes well with Halle and Gunner.

(3) Evangeline/Evie

Evie was listed as one of the matches for Halle (or rather, Hallie, as the spelling Halle didn’t have its own entry), which is so sweet, and it made me think immediately of Evangeline, which I thought might have just the right elements: it’s long, like Caroline and Rebecca; it’s biblical-ish, which fits in well with Sarah and Peter; Evie as a nickname is a good match with the shorter Grace; and like Sofie/Sophie and Grace Evangeline’s also a faith-filled concept.

(4) Leah/Lena/Lily (or Lilly)

I grouped these last three together because they’re all four-letter names starting with L. I like each of them for different reasons: Leah’s a major Old Testament woman, so certainly a good fit with Sarah and Rebecca (it’s somewhat pan-European as well, and its Scandi spelling is Lea, but I don’t love that because I think it makes the pronunciation uncertain — Lee or Lee-ah?). Lena was listed as similar to Halle, and can be the Scandinavian short of Helena or Magdalena, or it could be a nickname for Evangeline (I’ve seen a few families do so). And I think Lily — which was listed as similar to Grace — works on so many levels — it’s Marian; it is sometimes used as a form of Elizabeth, which ties in the Bible; it’s got a Scandinavian form (Lilly); it’s sweet and feminine like their other girls’ names.

I don’t know any of the girls’ middle names except Sarah (Catherine), so I don’t know if I’ve listed some names here that are unusable for that reason, but otherwise — what do you all think? Do you think these predictions are well founded? What name(s) would you predict Philip and his wife might choose, based on what we know of their taste from their previous choices?

(If anyone knows Philip or his wife and can pass this on to them, I’d be delighted. 🙂 )

I love to do name consultations! If you’d like me to give your name dilemma a go, check out my Baby name consultant tab.

Birth announcement: Nathaniel John!

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I received another wonderful birth announcement from a private-consult mama! She writes,

“Just a quick note to let you know that our 5th baby has arrived and it was a boy! I’m horrible at guessing the gender lol. We had decided on Lydia Therese if it was a girl, but as he is a boy we went with Nathaniel John as planned.”

I love love love the combo Nathaniel John, so handsome!! He joins his very well named older sibs:

Tahlia Belinda
Angus Jack
Isaac Lachlan
Bethany Mary

Such great taste!! Congratulations to the whole family, and happy birthday Baby Nathaniel!!

nathaniel_john

Nathaniel John

Birth announcement: Margaret Clare!

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A mama I’d done a private consultation for a couple months ago emailed me to let me know her little girl has arrived! She writes,

“We’re happy to share that on August 6th we welcomed our happy, healthy and beautiful daughter Margaret Clare into the world!

We really debated between naming her Margaret and Isabel, but after 26 hours of labor that ended in a c-section, we thought maybe the patron saint of childbirth and pregnant women (St. Margaret the Virgin) would be fitting. We also debated on the spelling of Clare but eventually settled on the spelling like St. Clare of Assisi.”

What a beautiful, meaningful name!! Congratulations to the proud parents, and happy birthday Baby Margaret!!

margaret_clare

Margaret Clare

Good name posts and beautiful Name products

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I loved both of these recent posts on the Baby Name Wizard site:

Are Presidential Candidates Running Away From Their Own Names? (It’s all about nicknames! I was most intrigued by Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz, Cara Carleton “Carly” Fiorina, and Piyush “Bobby” Jindal — Laura explains how each nickname came to be. The comments were good too.)

15 British Baby Names That Just Don’t Exist in America (Fascinating list! “The top 1,000 names lists from England and Wales include scores of names that don’t register in American stats at all. Let me emphasize that: these names aren’t just rare, they’re statistically nonexistent. Given that the most recent U.S. stats tally more than 30,000 names from Aaban to Zyyon, that’s saying something“)

And in light of my posts on the Holy Name of Jesus (here and here) I was loving these products from the Catholic Company:

An IHS Coffee Mug, where IHS is “the Holy Name of Jesus as it was written in the Gospels, is the first three letters of the Greek Spelling of the Holy Name of Jesus. The name “Jesus”, in Greek, is translated “ihsous.”” (Personalizable!)

IHS Coffee Mug

A Personalized IHS Prayer Card Holder, for all those holy cards we all have that “accumulate over time, often being stuffed in Bibles, missals, or prayer books which causes them be lost or forgotten.” (Personalizable!)

Personalized IHS Prayer Card Holder

These beautiful Jesus Beads, which I’d never heard of, but I loved this: “Jesus Beads originated in the tradition of the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Called a chotki, the strand may have as many as 100 beads or as few as 25. The chotki is traditionally used as a silent “breath prayer”, with “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God” prayed on inhalation and “have mercy on me, a sinner” prayed on exhalation. This is known as the Jesus Prayer, or the Prayer of the Heart, which invokes the Holy Name of Jesus and implores His divine mercy. (You can read about the “Jesus Prayer” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2665-2669)”:

“Prayer to Jesus

2665 The prayer of the Church, nourished by the Word of God and the celebration of the liturgy, teaches us to pray to the Lord Jesus. Even though her prayer is addressed above all to the Father, it includes in all the liturgical traditions forms of prayer addressed to Christ. Certain psalms, given their use in the Prayer of the Church, and the New Testament place on our lips and engrave in our hearts prayer to Christ in the form of invocations: Son of God, Word of God, Lord, Savior, Lamb of God, King, Beloved Son, Son of the Virgin, Good Shepherd, our Life, our Light, our Hope, our Resurrection, Friend of mankind. . . .

2666 But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: “Jesus,” “YHWH saves.”16 The name “Jesus” contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray “Jesus” is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him.17

2667 This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.” It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light.18 By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior’s mercy.

2668 The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying always. When the holy name is repeated often by a humbly attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases,19 but holds fast to the word and “brings forth fruit with patience.”20 This prayer is possible “at all times” because it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus.

2669 The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins. Christian prayer loves to follow the way of the cross in the Savior’s steps. The stations from the Praetorium to Golgotha and the tomb trace the way of Jesus, who by his holy Cross has redeemed the world. “

Jesus Beads

Finally, Devotion to the Holy Face by Mary Frances Lester. I know it’s not specifically about the Holy Name, but I just discovered today that St. Therese’s full religious name was Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, so how coincidental to see this!

Devotion to the Holy Face

Happy Thursday night y’all! (Does anyone else wish it was okay for non-Southerners to use y’all? It’s so useful! I find it creeping into my thoughts though I usually edit it out of my speech … but not tonight! Also, aren’t Thursdays the best? My dad always says that Thursday’s the best day of the week because no one really minds going to work on Friday, since it’s the last day of the week and has a party feel of its own, so Thursday night especially feels kind of like the beginning of the weekend. I suppose that’s the idea behind Thursday nights being Going Out nights in college? So then maybe consider this your happy hour. 🙂 )

(Okay, one more story — my husband went out for a brief drink after work tonight with colleagues, and when he got home I meant to say, “How was happy hour?” but what came out was, “How was holy hour?” Bahaha! I’m still laughing!) 😀

My newest CatholicMom.com column

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You all know I’m struggling with these Planned Parenthood videos so you shouldn’t be surprised that my August column at CatholicMom.com (up today) tackles the issue again (my previous post here on the blog, I would imagine Planned Parenthood fears names, was the most shared of all the posts I’ve ever written, by a landslide, so I know you’re all feeling it too): Planned Parenthood vs. the Holy Name of Jesus.

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(I blogged about the Holy Name the other day too, especially in regards to Its major promoter, St. Bernardine of Siena.)

Of course I had no way of knowing when I wrote it that the seventh video would be released today, but I’m glad my article’s coinciding with the release of this new information of horror: babies alive after an attempted abortion, with still beating hearts, having body parts harvested, including “how the abortionist made [the “former procurement technician with Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress” who revealed this info] harvest the baby’s brain by cutting his face open with scissors.”

This is a bit from a historical novel I just read (Winter of the World by Ken Follett, about the Second World War, including the Nazis):

image

This particular bit is about how the Nazis rounded up disabled children — and adults too, though it doesn’t reference them in this particular passage — but most of the German citizens either didn’t know it or didn’t believe it.

Then there’s this, from the same book:

imageIt explains more about that very program:

“The program was called Aktion T4 after its address, 4 Tiergarten Strasse. The agency was officially the Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutionalized Care … Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people … The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the program had to be kept quiet.”

Of course parallels have been drawn for a long time between the Holocaust and abortion, but still I was struck by the similarity between what I was reading and what Planned Parenthood (and all abortionists) is and has been doing. In fact, our government does sanction the killing of handicapped children. Healthy children too! The particular horrors have been kept quiet for some time, and there are those (one example here) that seem to think the same as what’s being said in this passage — that the graphic revelation of horror shouldn’t change hearts because we need to be “sophisticated” enough to understand the need for this “necessary” evil.

Just like the Nazis.

God help us all, in Jesus’ name.

Alumni mag namespotting, and Swistle question

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You know I love getting those alumni mags in the mail! The update section — where everyone shares what they’re doing, like jobs, marriage, and babies — is like a little Christmas-come-early gift. Just the other day I spotted this triplet set (!) (alt characters used for privacy):

S!m0n V!nc3nt
Le0 Charl3s
Cec!lia M@ry

I mean really. A million bonus points to them for Superb Catholic Naming.

I also read this Swistle post yesterday and wondered what you all think: Is Judah “too Judas” for use? I personally don’t ever connect Judas Iscariot with the names Judah or Jude, even though all three are just variants of the same name. Really, all three have totally different feels to me:

  • Judas is one of those names that Catholics aren’t allowed to use (Canon 855 states that, “Parents, sponsors, and the pastor are to take care that a name foreign to Christian sensibility is not given”)
  • Judah is Ben Hur, or (in my experience) most likely from a Jewish family
  • Jude is all ours (and maybe a little bit Brit, thank you Beatles and Jude Law) because of St. Jude Thaddeus, and his namesake St. Jude’s Hospital, as well as all the little Catholic boys I know named Jude

I have to say, I was surprised that the couple in the Swistle post had heard “the guy that betrayed the savior?” from “99% of our friends and family” — what are your thoughts/experience?