How people choose a baptismal name, and how this page helps

1. What a baptismal name is

In the Catholic Church a person being baptised takes the name of a saint, or is confirmed under one. The saint becomes their patron, and the saint's feast day becomes a personal day in the year, a bit like a second birthday. Many families in Korea use the baptismal name daily inside the parish, so it is a name you will actually be called by.

Both saints and blesseds are used. A blessed is someone the Church has beatified but not yet canonised. Some parishes accept a blessed's name without comment; others prefer a canonised saint. This page marks the two apart so you can see which is which before you ask.

There is no central list of approved names. A parish can accept almost any saint, and the spelling that goes into the register follows the local bishops' conference, not any website, including this one.

2. The three ways people narrow it down

By the calendar. Many people look at the saints whose feast day falls on or near their birthday. It gives the name a natural anchor, and the feast is easy to remember.

By patronage. Nurses look at patrons of nurses, students at patrons of students, people who travel a lot at patrons of travellers. The patronage is a tradition rather than a rule, and it is recorded unevenly, so this is a narrow door.

By who the person was. Someone drawn to teaching looks at teachers and abbesses; someone who has been through a hard year looks at martyrs and converts. This is the axis that usually decides it, and it is the one that a one-line description can only hint at. Read further before you settle.

People also inherit a name from a godparent, or choose one for its sound in their language. Neither of those can be searched here, because the data does not carry them.

3. What this page does, exactly

The list has every person on Wikidata who is marked as a saint or a blessed and has a feast day recorded. That is a few thousand people. The data is fetched once when the site is built and stored with it, so the page never contacts Wikidata while you use it, and it works the same for everyone who opens the same link.

Search runs on three things at once. A word is matched against the English name, the Latin name, the Wikidata Korean label, the description and the recorded patronages. A birthday, month and day only, keeps the people whose nearest feast day is within the window you pick, seven or thirty days, and sorts them by distance. Two toggles narrow by women or men and by saint or blessed, and a third keeps only people with a recorded patronage. Matches are shown forty at a time; tighten the search rather than scroll.

The shortlist holds up to twelve names. Adding and removing rewrites the address in your browser bar, so the address is the list. Refreshing keeps it, a bookmark keeps it, and the copy-link button hands over that same address with one small tag so we can tell that a visit came from a shared link. Nothing about the list is sent to our server and nothing is stored on it; there are no accounts.

The comparison table shows, for each name, the English name, the Latin name where Wikidata has one, the Korean label where Wikidata has one, every feast day, saint or blessed, the recorded patronages, the one-line Wikidata description, and a link to the Wikidata entry. Empty cells stay empty. This page never writes a description of its own.

The month pages list everyone with a feast day in that month in date order. A person with two feast days appears under both. Tapping a name there starts a fresh shortlist with that one name.

What is not here: no name meanings, because Wikidata does not attach them to saints. No Korean spellings beyond Wikidata's own labels, and those are marked as such. No biographies. No pick.

4. A way to use it

Start with your birthday and the seven-day window. You will usually get a dozen or so people. Add the two or three whose descriptions catch you, even if you are not sure.

Then search a word for the kind of person you have in mind: nurse, teacher, mother, convert, missionary, queen. Add one or two from there.

Open the table. Look at the feast days together and at the Latin names, since the Latin form is what most other languages derive from. Remove anything that no longer feels right. Three to five names is where most people end up.

Copy the link and send it to your sponsor, a friend from the class, or a family member who has been through this. Ask them a question rather than for an answer: which of these sounds like me?

5. Going further

For each name that survives, open the Wikidata entry and follow it to a fuller article. A single line cannot tell you whether you would want to carry that person's story. That reading is the real work, and it is outside this page on purpose.

If you are in Korea, or your parish is Korean, take your final two or three names to the parish office and ask how each is spelled in the register. Some names have more than one Korean form in circulation, and the parish will have one it uses.

If you are choosing for a child, do the same shortlist with the other parent. Two shortlists compared often settle faster than one person deciding.

If you want a name that is also usable outside the church, look at the Latin and English forms side by side in the table; some names travel well across languages and some do not.

6. Where people get stuck

No feast near my birthday. Widen the window to thirty days, or drop the birthday and search by a word instead. The calendar is one door, not the only one.

The Korean spelling looks wrong. It may well be; the label comes from Wikidata, not from the bishops' conference. This page says so next to every Korean label. Use the English or Latin name when you ask your parish, and let them give you the register spelling.

A name I expected is missing. The list only includes people whose Wikidata entry records a feast day and a saint or blessed status. Old Testament figures such as Esther and Judith have no canonisation status and are not here even though some parishes accept them. If a name is missing, ask your parish directly; do not assume it is not allowed.

Two people share a name. That is common. The description and the feast day tell them apart; add both to the table if you are unsure and compare.

The list is full. Twelve is the limit, because a table with more columns than that stops being a comparison. Remove the ones you have already let go.

I want the page to just pick one. It will not. That decision is yours, and the point of the list is to make it with someone rather than alone.