Choosing a Name

     Nowadays one of the commonest ways of naming a child is just to give the child a name you happen to like. More often than not it is the name of some actor or actress. St. John Chrysostom has an interesting suggestion in this matter. He writes: "Let us afford our children from the first an incentive to goodness from the name that we give them. Let none of us hasten to call his children after his forebears, his father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, but rather after the righteous —martyrs, bishops, apostles. Let one be called Peter, another John, another bear the name of one of the saints. Let the names of the saints enter our homes through the naming of our children."

     It is St. Chrysostom's idea that the child should be given a great name; that he should be repeatedly told the story of the great bearer of the name; and that thus he should be motivated to make himself like the great owner of the name which he bears.