Is this a thing? Naming babies…

[CurlewKate]

I’ve just been told by a woman that in her faith (she’s a Christian, but I don’t know what sort) men name babies because God gave Adam the authority to name all the animals and so on. Is this just her, or is it a thing?

I don’t believe it worked like that
Youre assuming non agreement when they wanted to protect the memory of or honour the existence of relatives.
Women’s brothers kept alive her parents and she kept alive her husbands
Women moved into the family home of their husbands so the connection was strong.

Women generally had more say in younger children’s names
In my generation myself and my dbs second names are my maternal grandparents
my cousins of the same generation all did much the same

younger cousins born 70/80s first names are random ( modern chosen by both parents) with second names all family names from both sides
except the boys names following the dads

( I was at a funeral recently and found myself sat at a table with all men /boys with the same name from ages about 10 to 80 …all first cousins and an uncle ).

Discussions move on
Over time the real reasons for something fade away

A lot of people have no idea what bonfire night was all about and happily party along. They've forgotten the real reason.

I had no idea why I grew up not allowed to wear green. The real reason had faded away and now I’ve found out

So Was the route to the desire to preserve one’s name ( when faced with its loss ) at one time imbedded in religion
For Irish Catholic’s a lot of life was, so perhaps

For clarity, this woman definitely meant that women should have no part in the naming of babies because God gave that responsibility to Adam, and therefore to men in perpetuity. Very different from traditional Irish naming practices. Fine for discussion to move on- just wanted to emphasise that there are two very different things being discussed here.

@CurlewKate I worked with a Nigerian woman who said it was her husband who would choose the name of her child , according to custom / tradition. She was also very Christian.

Sounds like a patriarchal cult.

It's clear in both the Old and New Testaments that a significant number of the mothers who are mentioned do the naming.

I'm Irish too, and in my mum's family the traditional naming pattern was used, give or take.

In the traditional Irish situation, neither mother nor father really had any input, and the naming pattern was followed in order to honour both the mother's and the father's lineage, so the two sets of ancestors would be honored (albeit with the man's parents first).

The names used were very commonly used in rural.Ireland of the 30s and 40s - for example, James, John, Patrick, Thomas, Bridget, Mary, Eileen, Theresa. It wasn't uncommon for more than one grandparent to have the same name - two Patricls or two Marys, for instance. In mum's family there were two grandfathers with the same name.

The pattern could also be interrupted by having all boys or all girls.

My other Irish grandparents didn't follow the traditional naming pattern at all, but all the names were saints' names, and they tended to be repeated randomly over the generations, with a few being dropped entirely after one airing.

In my Irish family it was a bit different. Traditionally the eldest boy was after the father’s father, eldest girl after the mother’s mother. Second son after mother’s father, second daughter after father’s mother. Sometimes it changed a bit…if one of the baby’s grandparents were already dead they seemed to get precedence.

,Re the family name names, we have particular names running through my family, i think.that is more of an honour or tradition, and isn't what the op.is talking about.

True.
I’m Catholic and have never heard of men only being allowed to name a baby.

It's not a thing, no.

That roughly reflects my experience of both my known extended family on both sides and doing a bit of genealogy. The idea of naming being some kind of personal choice or indicator of patriarchal control doesn’t really work in the context of people just not really seeing naming children as a big deal, anyway — partly because there was a comparatively small pool of names, anyway. My mother’s family are a succession of Ellen, Johanna, Hanora and Mary, over and over, through the generations while the men are Jeremiah, Timothy/Tadhg and Daniel.

We chose to follow the traditional Irish naming thing with our DS because there had been a huge family falling out when DP was born, and he wasn’t given his father’s name. FIL was very sad about that- and giving the name to our DS did a lot to heal rifts. It was, however, my idea-nobody suggested it to me. And it’s a name I love and might well have used anyway. So two birds with one stone!

I think that's a nice thing to do.

DD never took her husband's surname, and their baby was given her surname. They chose a first name they both liked then middle names after his late grandmothers, so everyone was pleased!

My Irish family alternated Francis and Hugh, and I am grateful to PP explaining the female naming tradition. I have always wondered why the women in my family were often called Bridget!

That was a lovely thing to do @CurlewKate .

It also reconciled the Irish side of the family a little to the fact that I had no intention of marrying dp, never mind taking his last name!

Oh a "sweetner" 😀

I've only ever heard of it being a cultural norm in the FLDS, because I remember an author of a book saying that she didn't like the name that her husband had chosen for their daughter, but as a submissive wife, she had no say in the name choice.

Which is why our kids have my dhs surname. My dh is an only child with no cousins, second cousins nothing. So he was the last in the line. Meanwhile my Irish family are flooded with cousins all with my surname. My FIL was dying and I told him our kids would have his family surname. To keep it going and because I wanted to support that.
There wasn’t any pressure,no one ever asked before but they must have been wandering as I kept my name ( I love my name, it’s a classic that’s often used for the hoodlam gangster characters on TV 😆)

I think this idea that women are always pressured into things in a misogynistic way undermines them. It’s very belittling