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Living overseas

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Original poster

Do you have name-days where you live?

9 replies

SlightlyScrambled · 04/05/2011 07:20

I'm still getting used to the concept. DD's name day is coming up and there are more people (all family) visiting this time than did for her birthday.

When choosing her name we consulted the calendar to make sure the nameday wasn't too close to her birth date. (DH has always felt a bit miffed that his was so close to christmas so this is a bit of a pet peeve with him.)

Do you celebrate name days where you live and if so, how big of a deal are they?

OP posts:

LinzerTorte · 04/05/2011 07:42

We do have name days here (I'm in Austria) but they're not really celebrated as such and we certainly didn't look at the name calendar when we were choosing the DC's names (although they're fascinated by it). One of my friends phoned up on DD2's name day to wish her a "happy name day" and I had to confess I hadn't even remembered it was her name day that day.

My SIL and her DH, OTOH, always used to celebrate their DC's "birthdays" (i.e the day of the month on which they were born) every single month!

Bucharest · 04/05/2011 07:46

Yes.
More important names tend to get cakes and presents. (Giuseppe, Francesco, the zillions of Maria-this Maria-that)

Mere mortals with less Uber-Saintly monickers tend to get nada.

Geocentric · 04/05/2011 13:27

I'm guessing you mean Saint days? If so, over here we don't celebrate them as such but if your name is the same as one of the key saints (like Peter) you might get a 'congratulations'.

Brazil being an officially Catholic country you'd have thought they would make more of it!

belgo · 04/05/2011 13:28

What are name days?

Dontbugmemalone · 04/05/2011 13:35

Yes. They are more celebrated than birthdays generally (in Poland). It normally involves a family gathering and vodka

Dontbugmemalone · 04/05/2011 13:37

belgo- this should give you more info

belgo · 04/05/2011 15:03

thank you!

Original poster

SlightlyScrambled · 04/05/2011 17:54

Saint days are completely different. So if my name was Celine, there'd be a day where all the Celines would get a little fuss made of them, in addition to their birthday fuss.

My own name isn't a Finnish one, seeing as I'm not Finnish, and it wasn't on the calendar here so I got out a book to find out when it would be as I didn't want to be missing out on cake.

Here it tends to involve Cake and Coffee. DD's grandparents came around for the last one as did one aunt and this year there are few more coming so there'll be lots of cake and coffee had. But the bit that surprised me was they gave the same kinds of presents to her as they did for her birthday.

OP posts:

2and1ontheway · 04/05/2011 18:27

We live in Bavaria, which is very Catholic, and name days are often made mention of, especially for children, but not celebrated as such. However they come in useful for children with birthdays at inconvenient times - one of DD's long term friends has her actual birthday on Christmas eve but always has her birthday party on her name day in July, and she is not the only one - a handful of children who simply have winter birthdays, not necessarily too close to Christmas etc. still have their party months later on their name day if it is in summer so it can be outdoors, and this seems totally accepted though not absolutely the "norm". I have not come across anyone making a big deal with cakes and presents etc. for both name day and birthday though.

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