Duil Name Days

Name Days mark the day someone was given a name, and are celebrated annually in Duilintinn. Some people have multiple name days, celebrating anniversaries or other important events where their name was changed.

## Significance of Names

Duilintinn celebrates one’s Name Day instead of their birthday for a few cultural reasons, primarily wrapped up in the importance of finding one’s place in the world.

Childbirth is very dangerous, and most parents won’t name a baby until they are expected to survive their first few weeks of life. Those days of uncertainty don’t count towards the child’s age any more than the months of pregnancy and labor do in the real world.

When the family knew that the child would live and are here to stay, they're given a name. Once again, this ties into Duilintinn's cultural focus on helping people to find their place in the world; surviving childbirth would be the first step towards that.

For a baby to die in childbirth or soon afterward is considered the worst tragedy imaginable. Ideally, everyone above the age of one has had the opportunity to experience love, gentleness, family, and a home… but newborns who die in childbirth never will. It’s super sad… the parents don’t even have a name to remember the child by. Unfortunately, that’s just life, and encouraging families to forget these small losses is almost a kindness. In a kingdom where finding one’s comfort place in the world is such a highly emphasized goal and quest, to remember and mourn a child who never got that would be absolutely soul-crushing.

For this reason, children aren't named until they're likely to survive the initial danger period after childbirth, and that Name Day is celebrated from year to year instead of a birthday.

## History

Name day celebrations have been a thing since the Feadhainn Era. However, the significance was different. In Duilintinn, it's about the symbolic moment the baby was welcomed into its first home, but in Feadhainn, it was about the symbolic moment the baby was given an identity, it's greatest strength and weakness. To them, a name was what made a baby human.

This particular belief is still somewhat prevalent in Duilintinn, though not in such a blunt way. No one says they believe it, but the cultural undercurrent of belief/superstition is still there. The Feadhainn belief that a baby isn't human until it got a name is one of the reasons why babies aren't named until they're certain it will live. If you don't think of the child as a true being with an identity until it's named, then it's easier to move on from the death of an unnamed child.

## Celebration

Name Day celebrations are pretty similar to birthday celebrations in the real world. In other words, they all involve gifts and yummy food, but other than that, they are incredibly varied. Here, a birthday party can involve anything from laser tag to tea parties. In Duilintinn, you’ll find kids celebrating their Name Days with mock battles carefully prepared by family members weeks in advance, outings to the local town, city, beach, or mountains, a horseback ride with friends, or anything they want, really (within reason).

For adults, Name Day celebrations are celebrated according to preference. Some people like parties, some just want a quiet family dinner, others might enjoy an outing, while others still might not want any fuss at all.

In addition, celebrations can vary from house to house. However, this is more due to the regional/cultural difference in opportunities for certain types of events than to a difference in cultural attitude towards name-day celebrations.

At the end of the day, a Name Day celebrates the day that you decided that the world was somewhere you wanted to stick around and find your place in, and you can celebrate that choice in whatever way that you want.

## Changing or Additional Name Days

There are times when someone might have an additional Name Day or change their original Name Day entirely.

Name Days are primarily a celebration of being welcomed into a FAMILY (your first happy comfort place) and typically refer more to the surname than the first name. Therefore, the changing of one’s surname almost always calls for an additional or change in Name Day. This act is considered to be either the ultimate act of dedication and commitment (to add someone else’s surname to your own) or alternatively the ultimate act of cutting ties with someone, usually after a family fallout or divorce.

By contrast, changing your first name wouldn’t automatically call for a change in your old Name Day, though some still commemorate the date if it is very important to them.

### Extra Name Days

There are many reasons why someone would add someone’s surname to their own. Combined surnames are typical of modern marriages in Duilntinn. There are also cases of platonic name-adding, often in found-family groups. Children who are adopted but still feel a connection to their late family often add their adopted surname to their former one. In all of these cases, these name changes would always result in an additional Name Day.

In addition, some people who change their first name and consider that change an important milestone in their lives may celebrate an additional Name Day.

Additional Name Day celebrations vary heavily depending on the circumstances and personal preference, but typically, they are most analogous to an anniversary celebration or a Gotcha Day\*, with a small celebration between the parties in question.

*\*For those who aren’t aware, a Gotcha Day is the day an adopted child came to their forever home for the first time. My brother is adopted, so we celebrate his Gotcha Day in mid-April with a traditional Korean dinner, looking at old pictures from when he arrived, sharing stories about the adoption process, and generally just recognizing the day he came home. No cake or presents or anything. Then we celebrate his actual birthday as normal later in the year. However, families that only have adoptees might treat a Gotcha Day as a second birthday. It’s kinda like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. You do something to recognize it, but the celebration doesn’t dominate the whole day and/or days before or after.*

### Overriding Old Name Days

However, there are also people who choose to abandon their family name and take a different last name, often inspired by someone far closer to them. In a surrogate parent or found-family situation, they may even take the last name of another family that they feel closer to.

This erasure of your old surname and creation of a new one is a declaration that the family you were born into was not, in fact, the place of comfort and identity it was meant to be. As a result, this typically changes your Name Day entirely, from the original date to the date the new surname was chosen.

Lord Marvin is the best example of this phenomenon, taking on the surname “The Magnificent” in honor of his grandmother and in rejection of his birth parents.