{"id":10541,"date":"2014-10-15T08:48:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T12:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10541"},"modified":"2014-10-15T09:00:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T13:00:42","slug":"baby-naming-issue-does-the-name-shepherd-shepard-seem-religiousbiblical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/10\/15\/baby-naming-issue-does-the-name-shepherd-shepard-seem-religiousbiblical\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Does the name Shepherd \/ Shepard Seem Religious\/Biblical?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am curious about your opinion (and that of your readers)
\nI LOVE the name Shepherd and am considering using it for Baby No. 3 but my husband and I are not religious – bordering on atheism. Does it have too much of a biblical flare to make sense for us?<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

This name came up in yesterday’s post<\/a> as well, with the same concern, and I’m interested enough to have a whole post on the name. As I mentioned yesterday, I had to think for a moment to discover the religious connection—despite being a pastor’s daughter who grew up very familiar with Jesus\/pastor-as-shepherd imagery. The association is diluted by actual non-metaphorical shepherds, German Shepherds, Cybill Shepherd, Sam Shepard, Sherri Shepherd, Matthew Shepard, Alan Shepard, etc.<\/p>\n

Sometimes with such things it’s helpful to ask the question from the other side: “Does Shepherd seem biblical if someone doesn’t want it to be?” AND “Does Shepherd seem biblical if someone wants it to be?” For example, if someone were writing here saying they were very religious and wanted to use only biblical names for their children, and did we think Shepherd qualified as biblical, what would we say?<\/p>\n

I think I would say it’s a word-name that could be made to have an association with certain religious imagery, but that I wouldn’t think of it as a religious\/biblical name per se. It’s a little like saying Lily is a biblical name because Jesus tells a story about the lilies of the field, or that Reed is a biblical name because Moses was in a basket of reeds: it can have that meaning for the family, if the family wants it to, but if I met someone named Lily or Reed I wouldn’t make the connection without being told.<\/p>\n

In fact, on further thought, if I encountered a child named Shepherd, I think I would assume the family was NOT religious, because if the family WERE religious, I’d think they’d recoil a bit from seeming to compare their child to Jesus. It reminds me of the more extreme example of the name Trinity: it’s a very religious\/biblical word, but not one I’d expect to see used as a name in a religious family.<\/p>\n

Shepherd\/Shepard is interesting because I think the different spellings could make a big difference. Shepherd is an occupational name as well as a surname name—like Baker, or Deacon, or Archer. Shepard is a surname name. If you want to reduce\/avoid shepherd\/sheep\/Jesus imagery, I’d use Shepard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am curious about your opinion (and that of your readers) I LOVE the name Shepherd and am considering using it for Baby No. 3 but my husband and I are not religious – bordering on atheism. Does it have too much of a biblical flare to make sense for us? Thoughts?   This name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2K1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10541"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10546,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10541\/revisions\/10546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}