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Question 53. Father your blessing!
Evangelos
Answer to Question 53. Dear Evangelos,
The rules on names rests with the decision of the Holy
Synod of each local Church or with the Metropolitan. Up to a few years
ago in Cyprus we insisted on names being derived from names of saints or
church calendar events as the examples you mentioned so that the person
would have a feast-day. This would be the ideal especially as in the
Orthodox world people celebrate their feast-day more than their birthday
and more than not, they identify with the saint whose name they share
and adopt him/her as their special saint. This is not always possible as
we also have a tradition of Ancient Greek names e.g. Amalia, Agamemnon,
Odysseus, Yvonne, Telemaxos, Paris, Persephone and others which have
been around for centuries and very often are names of grandparents which
tradition demands must be passed on to the grandchildren. The Church
recognizes these names and allows them to be used although this does
away with the argument that the person must have a feast-day to
celebrate.
With love in Christ |
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