Christian name

Traditionally, a christian name or baptismal name is a [personal name]] given on the occasion of Christian [baptism], with the ubiquity of infant baptism in medieval Christendom. In Elizabethan England, as suggested by Camden, the term christian name was not necessarily related to baptism, used merely in the sense of "given name":

In more modern times, the terms have been used interchangeably with given name, first name and forename in traditionally Christian countries, and are still common in day-to-day use, although today, the secular term 'first name' is considerably the most common. But the "Christian name" is not merely the forename distinctive of the individual member of a family, but the name given to the person (generally a child) at his or her christening or baptism. In pre-Reformation England, the laity was taught to administer baptism in case of necessity with the words: "I christen thee in the name of the Father" etc. To "christen" in this context is therefore to "baptise", and "Christian name" means "baptismal name".

In view of the Hebrew practice of giving a name to the male child at the time of its circumcision on the eighth day after birth (Luke 1:59), it has been maintained that the custom of conferring a name upon the newly baptised was of Apostolic origin. For instance, the apostle of the Gentiles was called Saul before his conversion and Paul afterwards. But modern scholars have rejected this contention, since the baptism of St. Paul is recorded in Acts 9:18, but the name Paul does not occur before Acts 13:9 while Saul is found several times in the interval. There is no more reason to connect the name Paul with the Apostle's baptism than there is to account in the same way for the giving of the name Cephas or Peter, which is due to another cause. In the inscriptions of the catacombs and in early Christian literature, the names of Christians in the first three centuries did not distinctively differ from the names of the pagans around them. A reference to the Epistles of St. Paul indicates that the names of pre-Christian gods and goddesses were used by his converts after their conversion as before. Hermes occurs in Romans 16:14, with a number of other purely pagan names, Epaphroditus in Phil. 4:18, Phoebe, the deaconess, in Romans 16:1.

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