Complex sentence: In pre-missonary time it was usual to give a newborn child the name of a close relative who had died shortly before and this way could experience a kind of return to a new live in the child.
Split into simpler sentences: In pre-missonary times it was usual to give a newborn child the name of a close relative who had died shortly before. This way, ancestors could experience a kind of return to a new life in the child.