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Traditionally, a Christian name or Baptismal name is a personal name given on the occasion of Christian baptism, with the ubiquity of infant baptism in medieval Christendom. In more modern times, till the later 20th century, the terms were used interchangeably with given name or first name in traditionally Christian countries, and was common in day to day use. Today, the secular term 'first name' is considerably more common in day-to-day use. This was the case in Elizabethan England, as suggested by Camden, who uses the term independent of the event of baptism and merely in the sense of "given name": :"Christian names were imposed for the distinction of persons, surnames for the difference of families." But the "Christian name" is not merely the forename distinctive of the individual member of a family, but the name given to him at his Christening, i.e., his baptism. In pre-Reformation England the laity were taught to administer baptism in case of necessity with the words: "I christen thee in the name of the Father" etc. To "christen" is therefore to "baptize", and "Christian name" means "Baptismal name". ==Origin== In view of the Hebrew practice of giving a name to the male child at the time of its circumcision on the eighth day after birth (Luke 1:59), it has been maintained that the custom of conferring a name upon the newly baptised was of Apostolic origin. For instance, the apostle of the Gentiles was called Saul before his conversion and Paul afterwards. But modern scholars have rejected this contention, since the baptism of St. Paul is recorded in Acts 9:18, but the name Paul does not occur before Acts 13:9 while Saul is found several times in the interval. There is no more reason to connect the name Paul with the Apostle's baptism than there is to account in the same way for the giving of the name Cephas or Peter, which is due to another cause. In the inscriptions of the catacombs and in early Christian literature, the names of Christians in the first three centuries did not distinctively differ from the names of the pagans around them. A reference to the Epistles of St. Paul indicates that the names of pre-Christian gods and goddesses were used by his converts after their conversion as before. Hermes occurs in Romans 16:14, with a number of other purely pagan names, Epaphroditus in Phil. 4:18, Phoebe, the deaconess, in Romans 16:1. Similar names are found in the Christian inscriptions of the earlier period and in the signatories appended to such councils as Nicaea or Ancyra,〔see Turner, "Eccl. Occident. Mon. Juris", I, 36-90; II, 50-53〕 or again in the lists of martyrs. At a later date the names are of a most miscellaneous character. The following classification is one that has been worked out by J. Bass Mullinger founded on Martigny. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Christian name」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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