Annelie och Zoran, Rasmus och Matilda. Förnamnet som kulturell spegling

In this article, various ways of understanding names and their significance for identity is discussed. A comparison between announcements in the births columns in two Swedish daily papers from 1965 and 1995 reveals that it is much more common to announce the child’s name today. This can be interpreted in relation to the conception of the vulnerability of the new-born baby, documented in the Folklife Archives, or as a manifestation of the increasing importance of individuality. In choosing a name for a child, family and tradition has played a big role and still does. However, parents today choose more freely. It is common to give their child a grandparent’s or other family member’s name but very few children are actually called the same name as a relative. The same name gives different associations according to generation, class and social adherence. This is also reflected in debates concerning “Swedish” and “foreign” names. Depending on the perspective, giving a child a name different from a traditional Swedish one can be considered either as flexibility or loss of tradition. It is worth noticing that many of the discussants advocating the latter were active in a different historical context. As many Swedish inhabitants today have their roots in other cultural and religious contexts, this is reflected in the naming custom. This leads to an alteration of the concept “Swedish” names. The name can also have political implications, something that is discussed in relation to a website and an ongoing debate in a discussion forum on the Internet. Here the consequences of the systematical deprivation of the African slaves’ names are in focus as well as strategies for regaining the name and thus an identity