So, my family is largely from Austria and the celebration of a name day is very common there
(Feast day of the saint you’re named after. Used to be traditionally the same as the birthday because it was the custom to name babies after the saint whose feast day they were born on)
Anyway since the closest saint to my given name is St Eric, today is my name day….
which got me wondering about whether there’s a saint for any of my chosen names
I was… pretty pleased with the search results for St Aster
Swedish name days stopped being based on the saints a long time ago, and is now just mainly a collection of common (and some less common) Swedish names (which does include some saints and other biblical figures, of course). There’s no name day for Aster, but November 27 is the name day for the feminine names Astrid and Asta.
Astrid is based on an Old Norse name which is a compound of a word meaning “Æsir” (the Norse gods) and a word meaing “beautiful”. The name therefore can be interpreted as meaning “as beautiful as the gods” or “beloved by the gods”. Which I think is a pretty Tron-esque name, all things considered.
Asta is, as far as I can find, described as just being a shorter version of Astrid. However, the Swedish Wikipeda article for the name also mentions that it might be derived from the Greek word for “star”, which would mean that it has the same origin as Aster. I should note that this statement is followed by a “citation needed”, and I haven’t found any other sources for it, so make of it what you will.
