My topic for the turn of the year is the history of naming ceremonies. Such traditions have been important parts of human culture at least as long as recorded history, and this makes sense: naming children marks them as part of their communities, and much about a society can be understood from how folks went about doing this.
Pictured here is the Central American Aztec Goddess Cihuacoatl, patroness of midwives who played a central role in how Aztec mothers gave birth. Midwives not only helped deliver infants, but were in charge of purification rituals and, with a baby’s grandparents, would start labeling a child straight off the bat.
If it was a boy, they told it “your trade and skill is war; your role is to give the sun the blood of your enemies to drink and feed the earth.” But with girls, midwives and grandparents would bury the umbilical cord underneath the homestead’s corn-grinding stone, the metate — thus spiritually chaining the young girl to the domicile in hopes that she would “be to the home what the heart is to the body.”.
These quotes come from a 16th-century text written by a Catholic friar named Bernardino de Sahagún, who was a sympathetic eye-witness among the Aztecs.
Aztec priests then selected a name for the newborn — based on the infant’s father’s report to them about the exact day and time of birth. The priests would consult an almanac and prognosticate the child’s fortune, and this guided their selection of a name.
Strong gender roles, a high vale of warfare, a belief in a special class of people to tell the future, and valuing the role of midwives are all elements of Aztec culture reflected in their naming ceremonies.
Source(s): _Envisioning Women in World History_, Clay, Paul, and Senecal, 2009 McGraw-hill. _National Geographic_, “Call the Aztec Midwife: Childbirth in the 16th Century,” Isabel Bueno, Jan/Feb 2017.
