What’s in a name

I’m posting a new drawing today. It seems that I haven’t quite exhausted this series of charcoal drawings yet.

I’m also posting a short extract from Christina Patterson’s book: The Art of Not Falling Apart.

This particular extract refers to the importnace of celebration and it became relevant last Sunday because it was my Name Day. According to wikipedia the custom of celebrating one’s name day originated with the Christian calendar of saints. Those named after a saint would celebrate that saint’s feast day, or in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the day of a saint’s death. Name days have greater resonance in the Catholic and Orthodox parts of Europe. This is certainly true in Greece, where name days tend to be celebrated more often than birthdays in adulthood.

The name I was given when I was christened was Antonia.  As far as I know, Antonia is of Roman origin, used as the name of women of the Antonius family. It is a variant of the Latin name Antonius, an ancient Roman family name, which however, derived from the ancient Greek name Anteon, son of Hercules. Anyway, when my father concluded on the name he wanted to honor his father, who was not alive by then, and I’m sure he had Saint Anthony in mind, not Ancient Romans or Greeks. Custom suggested that I should carry my paternal Grandmother’s name, Zoe, which means life in Greek, but in the end he insisted on Antonia to keep his father’s name alive, even though he found Antonia a bit too serious for a little girl, and preferred to call me Nia and Tonya.

Last Sunday I neglected celebrating or honoring my name day in any way. The fact that it was my name day somehow vanished in the background of my awareness for the most part of the day, but in the evening I remembered Patterson highlighting the importance of celebrating both the big things and the little things. She writes “To ‘celebrate’, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is to ‘honour with rites and rejoicings’. I think there’s a lot to be said for ‘rites and rejoicings’…….. Swedes love their rituals. At formal Swedish dinners, you’re not meant to take a sip of your drink unless you catch someone’s eye and make a toast. They also love singing songs. When my mother and I went to Sweden a few years ago, we went to see my uncle and aunt. My aunt invited some elderly neighbours round for dinner. There were seven of us round that table, including my eldest cousin. On the table were sheets of paper covered with words in Swedish I didn’t understand. I sent a panicked signal to my mother, but she just smiled. As soon as she sat down, Auntie Lisbeth picked up her sheet of paper and indicated that we should pick ours up, too. Between courses, it was clear, we would sing Swedish folk songs. I’m not sure that I’d recommend singing songs you don’t know in a language you don’t speak with your uncle, aunt and their elderly neighbours when you’re forty-five. But I knew that my aunt wanted to celebrate the fact that her sister was there, so I sang along anyway…” She continues: “ I think you should celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and leaving jobs. I think you should celebrate new books and new babies and new romances and new starts. I think you should celebrate the end of the working day and the start of the weekend. I think you should celebrate – and the scientific evidence backs this up – because thinking about good things makes you feel better.” In another chapter she writes: “I believe in parties. If you have parties to mark the fact that people have died, I think you should certainly make an effort to mark the fact that you were born and are still alive.”