Professional Documents
Culture Documents
WP 5
WP 5
Throughout my explorations, I have found that religion plays a large role in naming
ceremonies. In the Hindu religion as well as the Islamic world there are specific days in which
you name your child, instead of our common practice of directly after birth. Something that is
common in European culture that has continued in America, as well as other places worldwide, is
the generational use of names. Personally, my middle name is my great-uncles name. My father
and grandfather all share the same middle name as me, Douglas. Another common practice is the
use of a double name which started in France, and continued along Catholicism through the
My first name was one of two that was decided upon before birth. My parents decided to
keep the gender of all three of their kids secret until birth, so my name was either going to be
name. Levi, one of the twelve apostles, supposedly wrote the first gospel in the new testament.
The profession of Levi was a tax collector, and known in the Hebrew community as
Mattityahu meaning "gift of Yahweh." Yahweh being another form of the Hebrew God, which
My last name, Davis, was once Davies which is from Wales. Davies means son of
David. After the crusades, many military soldiers adopted biblical names into new ones, such as
Davies. Then when my family came over to America, our name was changed from Davies to
Davis. Simply because of the pronunciation we lost contact with many of our family members
still coming over. This caused problems and a separation for many generations. Till my ancestors
meet up in Michigan, people moved from Canada and Pennsylvania, and created an apple farm.