Religious names when parents are atheists?

we are atheists, and chose names which are not of religious origin, partly for this reason. our DC have very very popular names in the UK (boy's name begins with O, girl's name with E!), but they are names that work in both of our languages, so both sides of the family can spell and pronounce them.

I would probably wonder if you were religious with those names, but wouldn't judge for a second if you weren't and had used religious names!

How about nature/flower names paperclips?

Like Lily, Rose, Holly, Ruby etc for girls. Cliff, Rowan etc for boys.

Incidentally, there've been several St Williams. I don't think any of them are particularly well known these days though.

Me and DP are complete atheists but DS2 is going to be called Isaac because we both like it. All names have to originate from somewhere or are popular at different times; the names in the Bible are simply Hebrew names that were popular/common during the time periods the Bible was written - I wouldn't stress about it

Greenandcabbage or any other atheists, would you care to share the names you've picked without biblical connection.

I struggled to find any I liked enough, apart from William, but we ruled it out because its been used a lot in our families. Not keen on surnames as first names or modern made-up sounding names.

I am an atheist, and have chosen to avoid Biblical names. I can't explain why exactly, but I just don't feel comfortable with my children having names from the Bib;e. Although I would use names from literature, which is what the Bible could be, I suppose.

Hi!

Don't worry. Samuel and Isaac have long been popular enough names for it not to matter anymore about some old bible connections. If you like traditional names then it's pretty hard to avoid biblical names, and if you want to avoid saint's names as well, you really are stuck.

I was going to start a similar thread as it was concerning me too. We're both atheists and both the boy and girl names we've picked are from the old testament.

My question was, is Noah too biblical? Being such a "famous" bible story it seems more "obviously biblical" than Samuel, Isaac, Jacob or a lot of other popular names. And because it's not been popular for as long as many of those names.

Struggling for boys' names here, too. We're also atheists and have made the decision to avoid religious names. We're also determined to avoid extremely popular names, so are probably making things harder on ourselves than they have to be, LOL.

That said, Daniel is one of my favourite boys' names and if DH suddenly decided he liked it, too, I'd be happy to go with it. :)

Good luck!

DP and I are atheists and we have a Joseph and a Gabriel. No one has ever mentioned it apart from a lovely lady in the doctors who told us they were beautiful names then asked if we were catholic.

I am an atheist and if DD had been a boy she would have been Gabriel. I did wonder if people would make assumptions but decided I liked the name and could live with it.
I have just been on looking at all the Scottish names registered in 2011 and there is a Jesuslovesme. Now does Isaac seem too religious now?

Just don't choose "Jesus", yeah?

Well, my children both have Hebrew names, and I've never had assumptions made.

Mind you, I have a Jewish friend (admittedly secular) who is a wee bit miffed about the fact that her sons carefully chosen Old Testament name is becoming very popular

Absolutely fine IMO. When we named dd we needed something that would work both in the UK plus the country where we were living. The great thing about Biblical names is that they generally work fine (or have a close equivalent) in historically Christian countries.

You're overthinking it.

A lot of commonly used names in Britain are originally from the Bible, or were saints names - not surprising given that Christianity's historically been part of British culture.

I think that a lot of children with a biblical / saint's name have that name because it sounds familiar / traditional / fairly normal within our culture (as well as a name the parents like, of course) - not because they're from a religious family.

All three of mine have saints names (deliberately) and we're raging atheists Nobody will think deeply into your choice of names except you.

You are absolutely overthinking it! We are two atheist Jews who ended up with Greek names for the DDs. It never occurred to me that anyone would notice or care.

Lovely names, BTW. Good strong Hebrew names!

I should add I have a biblical name, despite being an atheist and having atheist parents. When I was a little girl I had a book with her story in it, which I loved.

Interesting. Within my church community you would get a lot of approving nods if you introduced your children as Samuel and Isaac. As the kids got older there would also be a strong expectation that the children would know their namesake's stories well, before they came up in Sunday school. All of the children who had church-attending parents at the time of their birth have at last one name from the Bible that I can think of.
Depends on the circles you move in:)

Go for it. They are names from the myths and legends that form part of our culture. No one would assume that you worship the ancient norse gods if you called your baby Freya, would they?

It doesn't matter. All the best boys names are Hebrew (in my humble opinion!). My DH is an atheist also (I'm pantheist - God is nature and all that) and even he has okayed the name Gabriel if we ever have a son (we have 2 DDs).

If they were called Jebadiah & Salome I would assume you were religious. But Sam & Isaac are so mainstream now it doesn't matter.

I have Caleb and Reuben and we are not remotely religious. We just loved the names. My aunt and a friend did wonder if we'd found religion, but most people have never mentioned it.

I might think Jewish too. If gave it any thought at all!

I'm clearly in the minority but I probably would assume the parents of Samuel and Isaac were Christian or (more likely) Jewish. I don't think that means you shouldn't use the names though - so what if people make wrong assumptions.