Why do nuns take men's names?

[mbagwell]

I am a cradle-Catholic and very proud of my faith. I recently got the part of the Reverend Mother in the musical Nunsense at our local community college. Because I am Catholic, the director and cast members always direct Catholic questions to me and many have come up in this show. Most are easy to answer, but this is hard…

Why do nuns take men’s names when they take their vows? When did this tradition start? Do some orders do this more often than others? Does anyone know?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

There is no one answer to your question. Here are a few of the reasons:

In some communities, nuns have been assigned the names that they are known by in religious life. This is an older tradition, not as common now as it once was, but it is true that some nuns have no say in what their religious idenitities will be.

Sometimes, especially in past centuries but true even today, names were unisex or were pronounced differently for men and women. Julian is considered today to be a man’s name, which puzzles some who wonder why Julian of Norwich had a “man’s name,” but in her day the feminine-version of the name was pronounced “Juli-anne.” Today the same name is spelled “Julianne” when given to a woman.

In some cases, when the choice has been the nun’s, a particular name (whether male or female) is taken simply because the nun has a devotion to that particular saint. Indeed, in some communities there is a community-wide devotion to a particular saint and variations of that saint’s name is given to all of the members. (This is why you’ll sometimes find that entire communities of nuns all have double names that start or end with either “Mary” or “Joseph.”)