Naming

A naming welcomes a person newly arrived in a family and gives them a name. It can be held whenever that arrival happens — a birth, an adoption, a fostering that is meant to last — and it is the same rite regardless of which of these brought the family to it. Nothing here performs a legal act or carries legal force; where a name needs registering, that paperwork happens elsewhere, on its own schedule. Nothing here is required of anyone. What follows is a script, meant to be cut, reordered, and rewritten by the people using it, not delivered word for word.

A naming does one thing and refuses to do a second thing, and both halves matter equally. It gives a handle, so that a person newly arrived can be spoken to, called across a room, written on a form. It does not describe who that person is. Those two acts look similar from outside — a rite, a gathering, a name spoken over a small new person — but only one of them is happening here, and the rite says so out loud, more than once, so no one in the room mistakes the second for the first.

Who gathers

The child, the family, and however many of the near ones the family wants in the room: a handful, a whole hall, or no one beyond the family itself. Someone holds the order of the rite and is called the speaker — any adult the family chooses, with no standing role and no authority beyond keeping the parts moving in order (see /thresholds). The rite can happen anywhere ordinary. A kitchen, a garden, a rented hall: no place suits a naming better than another, because nothing here needs to be held on special ground. A naming for an older child arriving by adoption or fostering can be smaller and quieter than one for an infant, and there is no correct size for either kind.

The order of the rite

1. A settling silence.
2. The speaker on what a naming is.
3. The act: the child passed from hands to hands.
4. The near ones named.
5. The adults' undertakings.
6. A reading.
7. The close.

A settling silence

The gathering is quiet together for about a minute before anything is said. This is the practice's own opening, done here the way it is done at the start of any sitting (see /practice/settling).

What a naming is

The speaker says what the rite does and, just as plainly, what it does not do. A name is a handle, useful for carrying a living thing more easily, and it is not the thing itself (see I.11). No one in the room knows yet who this child will turn out to be, and the rite makes no attempt to guess.

We are here to welcome a person and give them a name. A name is a handle. It is not the person. We are not naming who this child will become. None of us knows that yet, and none of us needs to. What we can do today is give a handle, and say plainly who will be near while this child grows.

The act: the child passed from hands to hands

The child is carried from one adult to the next, all the way around the circle, so that every person who will help carry them through the years that follow has held them once, today. Each pair of hands says the name once as the child arrives, plainly, without adding anything to it. If the child is older — walked in, rather than carried in — the same round can be a hand held for a moment by each person in turn, with the name said the same way.

[The name], welcome.

The line repeats, once per pair of hands, until the child has been all the way around the room. What is passed here is not only a child. It is a name, given by every hand that will help carry them (see I.13).

The near ones named

The family asks two or more people, aloud, to stay close to this child through the years of growing up. This is not a title and carries no authority; it is a plain undertaking, and it is answered the way an undertaking is answered. No ground is harder for a practice to hold than the people nearest it, and none is realer (see I.59) — and naming some of those people here, out loud, in front of the child, is the rite's way of saying that a family is not only the two or three people raising a child but whoever else agrees, today, to stay close.

[The near one's name], will you stay near this child as they grow — not as a title, but as someone they can find?

Each near one answers for themselves.

I will. I undertake to stay near, and to be someone this child can come to.

Where the family has no near ones to name, or wants none, this part is simply skipped. Nothing about the rite requires it, and a naming with no near ones named is exactly as complete as one with a dozen.

The adults' undertakings

The child's parents or guardians speak next, and everything they say is about their own conduct, not the child's. Nothing is promised about who the child will be. What is promised runs one way only, from the adults to the child.

We make no promises about who you will become. That is not ours to promise. Here is what we undertake instead. We undertake to be honest with you as you grow. We undertake not to make the wound that could have been avoided. We undertake to be here, as much as anyone can be here for another person. May you find, in your own time, a life you would choose again.

A reading

The speaker or another adult reads one chapter of Book I aloud: I.64, on the hand's reach widening past the people already in a life, toward whoever comes after — a child not yet grown counts among them (see I.64). A family that prefers it can read I.13 instead, on what it means to recognize another person's hand as your own.

The close

That is the whole of it. We made no claims today. We gave a handle, and we said who will be near. The rest is not ours to decide, and it was never going to be.

Adaptation

Anything above can be cut, reordered, or rewritten. A naming can be done by a single parent with no circle to pass the child around — one adult, one child, the same words, spoken plainly to no one but themselves and the child. Where no near ones are available or wanted, that part is simply left out; the rite does not require it. The whole thing can be done quietly, by two people, over a kitchen table, with no speaker named at all — each part read aloud in turn, or read silently and only the act performed. An older child arriving into a family can take part in their own naming directly, saying a version of the near-ones question themselves, or simply standing in the circle while it happens; the rite does not need a script for that case beyond letting the child choose how much of it they want. The one thing that cannot change, in any version of this rite, is the promise it does not make: nothing here claims anything about who the child is or will become.