It’s our Daughter’s Name Day today (Nimipäivä), something only our neighbour remembered because coming from the U.K. the practice of name days has died out (if it was ever alive!). When I was growing up I associated it with saints days in predominately Catholic countries. It seems I was slightly wrong and at least Orthodox Christian countries also celebrate this which I guess might indicate pre christian origins.
Anyway the official Name Days of Finland is published by the Almanac Office at the University of and contains all Finnish official Name Days lists (Finnish, Swedish, Sami and Greek Catholic).
So I thought I’d try to establish the name day for our son whose name is not ‘Finnish’ and therefore not covered in the official Finnish list. Wikipedia name day also gives an American name day calendar which started in 1982. Interestingly the 1982 and 2008 days for my son’s birthday are different, but the latest one seems good enough for us. That’s January 21st.
Another thing worth mentioning, that the more I looked at these lists, their differences and indeed similarities, the Swedish and Finnish ones seem totally aligned for instance, I can’t help thinking this is all mostly based on nothing more than precedence.
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