Titel: Naming the children
Skrivet av: Ingela Martenius skrivet 2008-01-28, 13:33
The practice of naming a child after a deceased sibling isn't unique to Sweden. I know it has been practiced in the US by people of e.g. Irish and French descent, so presumably the tradition existed in most of Europe. This practice ceased only when all children were expected to survive, and each child was thus regarded as an individual already at birth.
The most common practice in Sweden was for the child named after a sibling to have the exact name of the deceased sibling. Some families had - still have in fact - the tradition of using one name for all children of the same sex, while the other name was unique for each child. E.g., one family I know of name all their boys Maximilian, and have done so for at least 150 years (none of them actually use this name).
Naming a child after a deceased sibling and giving it a unique name seems to me to be a transition between the old way of regarding children as a boy (a girl) and the new way of regarding children as unique and not replacable by a later sibling.