Suprisingly common saint names

Because of the recent xkcd blag post referred to in my previous entry and because I like names a fair bit (and because I watched His Girl Friday again recently), I've been thinking about names lately. I was digging through the "top 1000" list and noting that there are a lot of very traditional saints' names on the list that you might not expect to see and which you may, therefore, want to consider, as they are not longer so uncommon. I won't comment on traditionally popular names, since those are already popular.

Among boys:

• Aidan/Aiden. The latter is the more common at the moment, but the two are extremely popular right now - like, top 10.
  
• Julian was #53 last year.
  
• Adrian, Sebastian, and Dominic were all between 60th and 70th.
  
• Damian and Vincent were both around #100.
  
• Leo and Victor were around #130 - both more common than Patrick, which was #142.
  
• Roman is #159, making it more popular than Peter (#205), Simon (#255), Paul (#193), Theodore (#197), or George (#166). It is more popular than Mark (#176), but Mark has other variants, one of which (Marcus, #149) is more popular than Roman. The above, however, do not have other popular variants in America.
  
• Maximus, at #206, is only slightly less common than Peter.
  
• Rafael (#286) is more popular than Gregory (#287).
  
• Several variants of Emmanuel are in the top 300.
  
• The variant Alexis, ie, the man of God, is fairly common, but right now it's much more common as a girl's name.
  

Among girls: I was surprised to see how popular Gabri- variant names are right now, and to see that Victoria is a top-30 name. Valentina is at #150. Genevieve is as #223. Nadia is at #293. Other than that, I don't really see any surprising saint names in the first few hundred, just ones you might expect to see. Other countries are more interesting. Right now in America, you can get away with naming a girl just about anything with a lot of vowels.

More notes about names.

Because the xkcd blag (it's not a blog) posted a link to some analysis of naming trends, I noticed that one of the names I mentioned in a previous post, Maximus, is actually very popular and trendy at the moment. Take note, fellow Orthodox.

Even more surprising is that Aidan (and variants) is extremely trendy at the moment. The constellation of similar names is easily in the top 10 and, if you broaden your definition of similar names, easily becomes the most popular name for boys. Life is good, I suppose, if you always wanted to give your child a very traditional Anglo-Saxon saint's name.

Dominic and other variants are also quite popular right now.

Unfortunately, Hilda, Hildegard, and other similar names are not terribly popular at the moment.

dear orthodox on the internet: what is your damn problem

I read a post from somebody saying, essentially, "Hi, I'm interested in Orthodoxy, I'm from a skeptical secular background or something, some things are hard, of course, etc." And the responses were, essentially, HUMBLE YOURSELF. YOU MUST BECOME ORTHODOX ON ORTHODOXY'S OWN TERMS.

That's not what they said, but, essentially, that was the message that got across. It doesn't help, of course, that if you're looking for information on the internet, nutterdox are far more prominent than they are in reality, but that's something else.

Part of it is certainly the culture of "replying to stuff" that we pick up: to reply to something, you must be critical, and so you find something wrong in what they said and say what was wrong with it, and that is how you reply. That's not healthy at all, or at least not pastoral, and definitely not encouraging. Even if you really think, "Everything you just said is awesome except this one little bit...", all that gets communicated is, "You're wrong about this here!" I mean, if everybody who expresses interest and concern about becoming an Orthodox Christian on the internets essentially gets lawyered into realizing that they're not good yet at this "being Orthodox" thing, who would be left? If you really read this thing, technically, we're not allowed to go to the bathroom.

The proper response is, of course, to slaughter the fatted calf. Who is so great a God as our God? Sure, don't gloss over anything or paint an unduly rosy picture, but there is, at the very least, room for another bad Orthodox in the back here.

Was Ronald Reagan the worst president, morally, of the modern era?

Perhaps. On the one hand, he didn't like murdering babies, but, on the other, he really enjoyed racist policies and stuck it to the poor. Nixon's foibles, at least, were purely personal.

Is the Iowa GOP racist?

Yes.

I'm not saying this on the basis of racist posts on the Iowa GOP facebook page that they have deleted, but rather the posts that they have not deleted and have not commented on. eg, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152122084787159&set=a.335425257158.150470.82076817158&type=1&relevant_count=1 What the hell? As much as I would like to pretend that being a GOP supporter in IA is not a matter of supporting racists, they are making it very hard to do. I mean, they had one big thing they deleted, but this shit is still around. The Iowa GOP is really making a mess of things here.

Worst common liturgical practice

Having been reminded elsewhere of the difference between, eg, a very Russian Russian vigil and a very convert-y touchy-feely service, I tried to think of the things I hate most when they occur. This isn't very healthy, but perhaps listing them will help me repent and heal. Or something.

1. The "holy handshake". Please, just keep going, don't stop the liturgy and don't touch me.
   
2. Stopping to explain things. I was at a service once where, right before the canon, the priest stopped the liturgy of St Basil to explain that this is the liturgy of St Basil, so the prayers are different, but they're great, so pay attention. Very disruptive, should have been mentioned during the sermon if it was to be mentioned.
   
3. Gratuitous linguistic acrobatics. With the exception of Greek, because everybody must use Greek if possible no matter how poorly they do it, it's probably not a good idea for a lot of non-native speakers to try to read in some language. Singing as a group might be okay if there are a few around who actually know what they're doing, but I really dislike it when somebody tries to do "40 Lord Have Mercy" by doing a decade in each of English, Greek, Slavonic, and Swahili.
   
4. Pews or chairs. Perhaps this should be first on the list. There is nothing in the world I hate more than having the sanctuary filled with rows of crap. Pews (and rows of chairs - they're morally the same) - stifle spiritual life.