Swedish Name Days
A friend of mine is Swedish and recently, she posted on Facebook that it was her name day. I had no clue what this was, so decided to look it up, so that when I wished her a happy "name day", I'd know exactly what it was I was wishing her.
My very basic level research (aka I googled it) told me that in Sweden, all but six days are allocated names, on which people who have this name (or similar) are able to celebrate. They had originated as with most things with the Catholic Church and their Saints days. Sweden changed some of their name days in the 18th Century to add some popular names and ones that didn't have religious links and then the Swedish church encouraged people to celebrate name days because they thought birthday celebrations were a bit too pagan.
I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to traditions, picking ones that I think look fun to adopt for my family and so I was eager to find out if my families names were on the list.
As far as I could tell, this means I would have TWO days to celebrate me and seeing as how my birthday has somehow turned into a birthday week and if I'm lucky a birthday fortnight, I knew that this was totally something I wanted to do.
So, I was totally selfish and looked up myself first.
GUESS WHEN MY NAME DAY IS.
Yeah, my name day is my actual birthday. I don't get two days. I get one day. The same day.
IT'S SO UNFAIR!
I then looked up the rest of my family. Flyfour has a day in June and Top Ender has a day in July. Cool, good to know and will totally be celebrating those days in the future, despite me not having one.
I'm not bitter.
Of course, you may have noticed that I'm missing one family member. You see, poor old Dan Jon, doesn't have a day... however in a weird coincidence if he had been born a girl I wanted to call him Sophie and guess what name his actual birthday is allocated to?
Yup Sophie.
I think Dan Jon and I will have to nominate another day as our name day... just need to decide what our alternative name is so we can work out when it is!