Naming Ceremony Readings

[Marianne02]

I am currently organising a Naming Ceremony for my daughter, Anna Sophia, and need to find a number of suitable readings/dedications/promises/poems.

In particular I'm looking for a reading/poem/prayer that expresses our thanks for the gift of life. Our daughter is especially precious, arriving as she did after years of fertilityf treatment and miscarriage.

We also need a dedication or promise that my husband & I can make to the baby.

Hi Marianne
We had a naming ceremony for our DD in April.
It's tough to find readings and poems, isn't it. There aren't nearly as many for babies as for love and weddings.
We used this poem, but changed it a little to suit our own tastes.

Will your ceremony be religious or humanist?
Ours was humanist (ie no religion) so I wrote the ceremony and all our vows myself.

If you want more advice about that, please let me know.

Thanks for your input Ruth. The ceremony won't be religious as that's not my inclination. Also she will be baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church later in the year (my husband's choice), so I see the naming ceremony more as a way of giving thanks for her arrival, and explaining the signficance of her name.

If you have any suggestions regarding vows/promises/oaths, I'd be very grateful. I'd like my husband and I to make a promise to protect and raise Anna to the best of our ability. Also, we may have some supporting adults that will need to make a vow.

Is your DD's name really Anna?!!
Now there's a coincidence!!

If you're not having a religious ceremony, I guess you're not having it at a church.
Will you be having a celebrant of any sort to MC the ceremony?
If you're interested in having someone who does it in a very professional manner, but not religiously, I can thoroughly recommend the British Humanist Society.
They provide celebrants for non-religious weddings, funerals and namings.
Both our wedding and our DD's naming ceremony were humanist and we had a great time at both.
They'll make it as relaxed or as formal as you like and will go to whichever venue you choose. (our wedding was at a country house and the naming was in my parents' garden)
Even if you don't want to use one of their celebrants, they have a book that has lots of ideas for ceremony formats, vows and readings.
You can find it on their website here

The vows we made were personal ones that we wrote ourselves. If you're really interested I could actually email you a copy of the entire ceremony.

Our ceremony so we called our supporting adults Anna's mentors rather than godparents.
In their case, I asked them to write their own commitments to her. I thought it would be better if they wrote something personal and unique with their own ideas.
In the end, one wrote statements that the celebrant read and she agreed with and the other two read their own statements out.

My parents also wrote a short piece that they read as Anna's grandparents.

My brother also planted a tree for Anna as a permanent reminder of the day. (thought we might as well, seeing as it was in the garden!)

This is probably all far too much irrelevant info for you, but if I can help any more, or you'd like to see a copy of the script containing our vows, just let me know.

Hi Ruth,

I'm familiar with the British Humanist Society web site but, since I live in Australia, it's not possible for me to use onw of their celebrants. I have however engaged a celebrant to perform the ceremony. I chose her because she is friend, but is a bit too "alternative" in her tastes. Hence the reason why I am looking for my own readings.

The naming ceremony will be in a rather beautiful room in a conference centre close to where we live. It's somewhat ironic that the conference centre is owned by the Catholic church when our ceremony will be secular!

If you are happy to send a copy of your ceremony it may give me some idea of what we could do in terms of vows, etc.

I'm not that confident about writing my own poems, readings, etc. so I'd still like to find something that's been published. The British Humanist Society's book is available in Australia but it seems a bit silly to buy it for just one ceremony. Are you aware of any good sources of poems, verse, etc on the internet?

Thanks again for all your help.

DH and I each wrote our own promises (well, more of a speech about what we hoped for DS and what we wanted to do for him) which seemed more personal than a more formal vow. We did come up with something more "formal question and response"-y for the supporting adults, though (in fact [smug emoticon] the BHA celebrant liked that bit so much that she asked if she could steal it to suggest to other couples).

If you CAT me I'd be glad to send you a copy of DS's ceremony. And I'll look out the list of readings that we considered (there were quite a few).

Hi Marianne

Yes, I can see that living in Australia would make it a little difficult to use a British celebrant.
We actually live in Japan, but we went back to the UK for the ceremony.

It's great that you have a friend who can MC the ceremony for you. That will make it really personal.
I agree that it seems unnecessary to buy the book for only one ceremony, but as it was only 6 pounds I did and it was very useful.

I did look on the internet for readings. There were a few around, but they are harder to find than love poems etc.
I'm afraid I no longer know what websites I used. I just did general google searches for things like 'baby' and 'poem'.
As for the vows, we wrote them ourselves from scratch, just by thinking about what was important for us with regards to our commitment for Anna and what we wanted for her future.

If you pass me your email address I'll happily send your our script.

We used If by Rudyard Kipling and the following two:

If a child lives with tolerance,
He learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
He learns to be confident.
If a child lives with praise,
He learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
He learns judgement.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship,
He learns to love the world.

I Wish for You One thing, and That is Love by William Byrd

I wish for you one thing, and that is love:
Love for life, and pure, unfettered joy
At being here upon this vivid earth.
May great pleasure come from giving pleasure,
And love that streams out from your burning heart
Light the darkened world and make it bloom.
I wish you to be loved both well and long
By all those whom you love; that these be many,
Among whom, not the least, might be yourself.
May you love the beautiful and good,
And always act with honesty and justice,
Being what you would that others be.
But most of all, I wish for you a love
Into which your love might plunge and drown,
An ocean in which you might live and breathe.

Not sure they fulfill your wish about thanks for gift of life but they may help. We also made the following dedications:

Do you both promise to love and nurture DS, to offer him stability and to give him the space to develop into his own character, making him confident and independent? (We do)

Do you both promise to care for and protect DS, for as long as he needs you. Do you promise to teach him right from wrong, honesty and integrity? (We do)

Do you both promise to always support him ? offering encouragement throughout his successes and failures, in which ever path in life he may follow? (We do)

Thanks for your input everyone. Ceremony scripts and lists of readings/websites can be sent to the following email address: [email protected]