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Ladd_Nathan
Guest
Sorry I can’t give an answer as to who might be a female saint with the same spirituality as St. Michael, but I do have a few observations I’d like to relate.
First, the name “Michael” has variants in other languages. In French, it’s “Michel.” In French, the feminine counterpart to the name “Michel” is “Michelle.” I don’t know if you could get around this obstacle by trying a route such as this, but it might be worth looking into.
I am Eastern Orthodox. My priest’s daughter was born on February 2nd, which is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. I would’ve thought he might’ve named his daughter Anna because of this–St. Anna having encountered the Holy Family there that day. However, my priest instead named his daughter Simeona, after St. Simeon, who also encountered the Holy Family that day. (See Luke 2:22-38 for details.)
I was baptized into the Orthodox Church at Easter three years ago. In my reading, I had come across a few brief references to picking a saint’s name at one’s baptism, but my priest never brought the issue up. There were a couple (Orthodox–but not Catholic) saints whose spirituality had attracted me and whose names were floating around in my mind as possible ones that I could choose (namely, St. Gregory Palamas and St. Seraphim of Sarov), but I had always considered St. Stephen the First Martyr as my patron saint because that is my name given to me by my parents. (And that was at a time when my family and I were non-practicing Protestants–and Protestants don’t even have patron saints!) I didn’t want to push St. Stephen out as my patron saint, so I never brought the issue up to my priest about picking a baptismal name. I later learned that those who have picked a new name at baptism are usually addressed by two names when receiving communion, e. g.: A woman given the name “Mary” at birth, but who picked St. Catherine as her patron saint at baptism, is addressed by the priest as “Mary Catherine” when she receives communion. I guess I could’ve been “Stephen Gregory” or “Stephen Seraphim,” but I’m just plain old Stephen now. Too late to cry over spilt milk!
[And as a side note here: I wonder if anyone can tell me if the “new name” mentioned in Revelation 2:17 is one’s baptismal name, or are we all due for another name change when we get to heaven?]
To go on with the topic of baptismal names (in the Orthodox Church, at least), I was the only person to be baptized in my parish church at Easter three years ago. Two years ago, there was also only one person baptized–but he picked a baptismal name. His circumstance was a bit different than mine, though. He had a family who was “sponsoring” (if I can use that word) his entry into the Church–that is to say, they had led him there (whereas I had come to the Church without anyone on this earth leading me there) and were advising him about such matters. The other thing was, his given name was not a saint’s name, so I guess he needed to pick one.
Last year, there were seven people baptised in my parish. Two were infants born of Orthodox parents, so they didn’t do any name-picking. Four are members of a family which converted en masse to Orthodoxy: None of them picked new names–however, they all had saints’ names as given names already. The seventh person was a woman who had been married to an Orthodox man for a number of years and who was finally joining the Church. She had a saint’s name as her given name, but she picked another baptismal name anyways.
And my final observation: I am Carpatho-Russian Orthodox. A man in my parish told me about a friend of his who had converted to the Greek Orthodox Church. He was told to pick a saint’s name for his baptism. He picked one out, but when he informed the priest of what it was, the priest told him “No,” and that he’d have to try again. The problem? The priest told him it couldn’t be the name of any Orthodox saint–it had to be the name of a Greek saint!
