It is clear that in recent times the variety of names with which we baptize or register our children has grown. And not always appropriate names are added to fashion, as we have said on many occasions. Now the Church is concerned about the decline of Christian names for babies.
Benedict XVI has given a touch of attention to the widespread use of names that have little or nothing to do with the Church. The Pope claims baptism with "Christian names."
A few days ago, at a mass in the Sistine Chapel where the pontiff baptized 21 children in an annual traditional ceremony, he advocated using names of the saint (I imagine that babies would be "selected" with this criterion), urging Catholics to retrieve these names for your next babies: "Baptize your children only with Christian names".
Until recently, by tradition in Catholic countries the names of the children were always that of the Virgin, that of Jesus or that of the saints and saints.
The pontiff declared that the new members of the Catholic faith acquire the character of son or daughter of the Church "beginning with a Christian name", of course I can think of many characters not too "holy" with such names.
Specifically, he talked about the unfortunate names of celebrities, cars and fruits (? "Apple and Peaches seem to be fashionable in some places).
It would not be the first time that a name becomes fashionable for being the name of some famous person (remember Edward or Isabella booming after the success of "Twilight"), although sometimes parents regret.
It also seems to be frequent that parents in love with their car, their computer or their musical group do not hesitate to give their babies their name or brand.
For a time, priests in Italy only baptized children who had names of saints, although precisely in Italy the Christian tradition is followed quite a bit by new parents: most Italians still prefer to baptize their children with names of saints. Francesco (Francisco) is the most popular for boys and Giulia (Julia) leads the preferences for girls.
In case you are thinking about this possibility for your children, here we leave you some biblical names, some very nice by the way (from others like "Herod" better not to speak ...). For those who wish to follow other traditions, we have names of Egyptian origin and below we leave the beautiful names of Greek heroes and heroines.
Bearing in mind that not only tradition but also meaning and exclusivity are among parents' options when choosing the name for the baby, and the name "exclusive" is an upward trend, surely many of the "Christian" names, precisely because of its wide use throughout the tradition, will not enter the possibilities.
But there are many other less frequent and beautiful, I recommend in this regard to take a look at the Bible that, beyond its religious meaning is a literary text of great beauty at times.
To conclude, I would ask you what you think about this Pope's request. In my opinion there are many other problems in the world to deal with (starting with the Church itself) and not for having more children baptized with names of saints they will be better people.
