Happy feast of the Ascension!!

One of you sweet readers asked for more posts and I want to apologize for not being more regular with my posting! I have such good intentions and so many ideas for posts, and some days the blog fits into my schedule easily (those are the days I post!) and other days I go to bed wondering where the day went. Be assured you’re all always on my mind and in my prayers!

I do have some namey things for you today! First up, my May CatholicMom column posted yesterday: Babynaming in the time of coronavirus.

You know I posted about this topic on the blog last month, as part of the post where I shared the article I’d written for Nameberry on the same subject. This CatholicMom piece includes some more Catholic-specific info. I’ll be interested to hear what you think!

Longtime friend of Sancta Nomina, Simcha Fisher, wrote about names in her piece this week for The Catholic Weekly: On unusual names. She speaks from experience! I loved this especially:

“I think of my parents welcoming a new baby girl into the family and deciding that her name would be joy,* and that baby was me! That’s not a bad thing to know. It’s a good thing to know that someone thought your arrival in the world was something other than business as usual!“

* Simcha is “Hebrew for “celebration” or, more broadly, “joy” or “rejoicing””

Swistle’s been posting quite a bit during quarantine, which I’ve been loving (so when your friendly Catholic name blogger is falling short of her very good intentions to post more to help keep everyone’s spirits up and provide a nice diversion from the heaviness of these times, check out Swistle! Or Abby at Appellation Mountain, of course, who’s the mama of frequent, meaty posts), and yesterday’s post has me a little riled up (the mama’s question/quandary, not Swistle’s answer). I’d be interested to see if any of you feel similarly!

Finally, yesterday was the feast of the *other* Saint of Siena — St. Bernardine! Not only is he the patron of my alma mater, Siena College, and THE promoter of the Holy Name of Jesus (woot!), but he also spent several years ministering to the sick and dying during a plague — work that rendered him weak and ill as well. What a saint for our time! St. Bernardine, pray for us!

Have a great Thursday!!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!