'Benedict' means 'blessed.' My parents liked the sound of the name and felt slightly blessed because they'd been trying for a child for a very long time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mum still says the biggest mistake I ever made was not being Benedict Lloyd-Hughes. She's very upset. But the only one who calls me Benedict in real life is my granny.
I think it is quite remarkable actually that Pope Benedict has a sense of the variety of ways in which it is possible to be a Catholic. I think he is more comfortable with a plurality of expressions of Catholicism in different rites, traditions than many of us are.
Blessing is the soveraign act of God, and the power of benediction like the power of God.
I still don't know what Episcopalian means.
Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.
'Duch' means spirit and 'ovny' is kind of the adjectival ending, so the word itself means spiritual. It's my father's name, obviously. He took the 'H' out because he was tired of people saying Duchovny, but he never did it legally. When my parents divorced, my mother, to my father, put the 'H' back in.
It is not a mark of manhood to carelessly use the name of the Almighty or of His Beloved Son in a vain and flippant way, as many are prone to do.
To holy people the very name of Jesus is a name to feed upon, a name to transport. His name can raise the dead and transfigure and beautify the living.
I was named for my grandmother. It's an evil-eye name, to protect you from bad things.
My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision.