Week 3 #52in52 - Namesake

 This week's #52Ancestorsin52Weeks prompt is "Namesake."

Have you ever thought about how weird it is that we get to name another human? I understand that it would be weird to call a child "child #1353" until they were old enough to pick a name on their own, and if you let a three year old pick their own name they would probably pick something like Princess Consuela Bananahammock as their name so that's not lost on me. But its still weird that we just get to look at another human and say your name for the rest of your life is Bart. 

In some cultures there used to be naming patterns that they followed. For example in Germany and Ireland traditionally the first son is named after the Paternal grandfather and the first daughter after the Maternal grandmother, then the maternal grandfather/paternal grandmother, then after the father or mother, and so on. That I guess makes picking a name for your child a lot easier but also has led me to many hours of confusion trying to figure out which Denis Kelleher is which (I have 9 in my tree so far that all stem from my 3rd great grandfather). 

There's also cases where you name a child after one of your own siblings, such as the case of my grandmother being named after her father's sister Marion who passed as a child, or a second cousin on my grandfather's side who named his son after his brother Alvie who had just been killed in WWII. Or we can get real confusing and name siblings after their own siblings who have passed away like my 4th great granduncle, Antonious Metzger, his brother passed away as an infant and a few years later he was born and named after him. His parents also tried to name a child Anton but he also passed away as an infant, I would have personally given up on the name at that point but to each their own. 

Of coarse there's the obvious just naming your child after yourself. My husband is named after his own father. Three of his male cousins are also named after their fathers. When we decided to have kids I wanted them to have family names as middle names but first names we just liked. Dominic and Jaxon are both named after fictional characters (Dominic Toretto from Fast and the Furious and Jackson Teller from Sons of Anarchy). Gianna on the other hand was a different story and her name became extra special for me. 

For those who don't know it took us almost two years to get pregnant with Gianna. During that time one of my friends from work was telling me her close friend just had a daughter and named her Gianna. I fell in LOVE with the name. I declared then that if we ever had a daughter that we would name her Gianna. Flashforward and JR and I are driving down a highway when we see a billboard for a fertility clinic called "The Gianna Center." Turns out that there is a saint named Gianna who is the patron saint of mothers and unborn children, and it is said that you can pray to Saint Gianna to help you become pregnant. So I did. And I did in fact become pregnant not long after. 

Were you named after anyone special?