„Mama taty nazywa się Barbara, ponieważ urodziła się w Barbórkę” – religijne motywacje nadawania imion dzieciom czterech pokoleń Polaków (na przykładzie rodzin studentów i studentek Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego)

The subject matter of this paper is religious motivations for naming four generations of Poles born in the 20th and 21st centuries. The research material is statements of the University of Warsaw students who attended an online course on anthroponymy. I collected the statements on motivations for naming children in their families between 2018 and 2021. I analysed the material with reference to the following generations: course participants, their parents, grandparents, and children. The analysis leads to the conclusion that religious motivations determined the choice of names in all separated groups although it is undoubtedly weaker in the generation of students (born at the turn of the 21st century) than in the generation of their parents. Th e research on spontaneous (other than survey) statements on the subject permit also the conclusion that there are several subtypes among the religious naming motivations. Hence, the discussed group included calendar names, names given to honour the patrons of a given parish, names given to honour the patrons of the parents’ professions, and names associated with an important event in the family’s life, the very act of nomination, or the etymology revealing the religious embedment of names.