Celebrate Your Name Week

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Celebrate Your Name Week 2008 logo
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Celebrate Your Name Week (CYNW) is a holiday created in 1997 by American amateur onomatologist Jerry Hill. Hill declared the first full week in March a week for everyone in the world to embrace and celebrate his or her name, and to appreciate names in general, by having fun getting to know facts about names.[1] This is a week set aside to participate in names-related hobbies, activities, and to take part in entertaining names-related events inspired by a fondness for and true appreciation of names.

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[edit] Background

In his childhood, Hill heard of a child who was killed in his city. The child was also named Jerry Hill. This and similar incidents made Hill increasingly curious about names, and Hill’s intrigue with names grew as years passed.[2] To celebrate an ever-developing interest in names, Hill established a web site, Jerry Hill Presents names (JHPN), which became very popular and was embraced by the Public Broadcasting Service.[3] The web site’s popularity forced it to move twice due to heavy bandwidth, while the web site and its mission were adopted and featured by Chase’s Calendar of Annual Events.[1]

As JHPN’s audience climbed to over a quarter million visits[4], the desire to transform visitors into participants resulted in the creation of the CYNW web site with its many ideas for participation.

[edit] Examples of Name Celebrations

“Name days” are a primarily European practice of affixing a name to days of the year. Each day is celebrated by the people for whom that day is named. In many cultures there are first names associated with the days of the year. The associations between the days and the names came about for many reasons, but it’s mostly attributable to church held festivals for saints of that name on any given day. In certain countries a person’s name day is celebrated with as much dedication as one would celebrate a birthday, and may include gifts for the honoree.[5]

Cultural celebrations of names include, for Hindus, celebrating Namkaran Samskar (Naming Ceremony). Namakaran, naming of a child, is the first real ceremony held for the newborn Hindu child. The ceremony is usually held on the 12th day of the child's birth, although, according to one custom, it can be held on any day after the tenth day, and before the first birthday. In a land where cultures are based on the celebration of names of a million gods, the conscious choice and control over personal names and identities is as essential as breathing.[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Chase’s Calendar of Events 2006, p. 164.

[edit] External links