Christian name
7
3.2
- noun
- /ˈkrɪs.tʃən neɪm/
:
nombre cristiano
- At the ceremony, the priest announced each child's Christian name.
- full Christian name
- use my Christian name
Her Christian name was Laura V Faith, her Russian name was Larissa Velanskaya.
- Her Christian name was Laura V Faith, her Russian name was Larissa Velanskaya.
- So his real name is his, His Christian name is his government.
Examples
-
Now, how do you spell her Christian name?
-
Jack Wilson was his Christian name.
Fiction book (1990) -
You do not ever call me by my Christian name.
-
And my Christian name is Robert, of course.
-
Look, is there any chance of you calling us by our Christian names?
-
I think my brother had never heard his Christian name before.
Fiction book (1998) -
"But the boys wanted to know her first name," her Christian name.
Fiction book (1999) -
Months ago, he stopped thinking of himself by his Christian name.
Fiction book (1992) -
You know how they used to give the Indian prisoners Christian names.
-
Do you know, Miss Drummond, I just realized I don't know your Christian name.
Synonyms
178
1.0
A name given at birth used before the family name
13
2.0
The name a person has before their family name
1
7.2
A name given to someone in a Christian church ceremony when they are a baby
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound clearly links 'Christian' + 'name', so a B1 learner would infer a name associated with Christianity, but the conventional sense — specifically the person's first or baptismal name — depends on cultural/pragmatic knowledge of Christian naming practices and is not strictly derivable from the words alone. The phrase can also be read ambiguously as 'the name of a Christian person', so it is partially but not fully transparent to learners.
Etymology
Christian name comes from the practice of giving a name to a baby at a Christian baptism. The word Christian points to the religion and name to the label given at the ceremony, so it came to mean a person's 'first name'.