Name Day

Years ago when I was a grad student, my fellow grad student Marcy and I would celebrate our birthdays together. Her birthday is October 7, and mine is October 9, so we would go out for lunch on October 8 and buy each other's lunch. It took us a few years to realize that if we actually celebrated our birthdays on the actual day of our births, we could take each other out -- me taking her out on the 7th and she taking me out on the 9th -- and get two lunches instead of just one.

It turns out that Latvians have been ahead of us for ages on this. I was having my weekly check-in meeting with the Dean of the humanities faculty, Dr. Maija Burima, and there was cake and flowers in the office. I have gotten used to this -- cake, coffee, flowers, and chocolates are ubiquitous in Latvia -- but I found out that the celebration was for one of the office staff's name day.

This is not a birthday. It is one's name day, and you will notice that every day of the year on a Latvian calendar has two to four Latvian names listed on that day. Other countries have name days like this, too, in particular Orthodox countries where the names are saints' days. That's what I originally thought they were in Latvia, too, and at one time they probably were. But if you look at some of the names, it seems pretty obvious that they are not saints. Saint Pārsla, anybody? Saint Banga? Saint Ilmārs? Yeah, I didn't think so either. I'm not exactly sure how one celebrates the day that honors the saint for which you were named. Having been raised Roman Catholic, I and all my siblings were named for saints. (My parents went traditional; I could have been Fabian, which would have been rather cool.) I know that Saint Robert Bellarmine's feast day is in November, but nothing special ever happened on that day, and I certainly didn't celebrate anything. Perhaps the Russian Orthodox Church takes these celebrations more seriously, though I don't know.

But Latvia does take this seriously. It turns out that a Latvian calendar lists about 1000 Latvian names, hitting all the major ones, and one day in the year (I'm not sure which one) is devoted to any Latvian names that have been missed and are not on the calendar. An official name commission regulates the names, adding new ones as they become popular and dropping others as they sort of disappear. By way of comparison, in the United States one would not find Gertrude or Rupert on the name day list, but one would find Ashley and Mason. So everybody gets a name day in the Latvian calendar year.

Why? To get presents. Mind you, name day presents are not supposed to be as fancy as birthday presents. Flowers and cake, that sort of thing, are standard gifts to give on someone's name day. But who cares? It's the fact that Latvia has seen fit to create another day of the year in which one is showered with presents, and that there an official commission whose sole purpose, apparently, is to make arrangements for this to happen. How can you not love a country that would do this?

So you now know that my birthday is October 9. My name day is January 14, so you have plenty of time to prepare. I am partial to Latvian honey cake (medus kūka). Just so you know.