Naming ceremonies

A naming ceremony is $595 on any day, including a family meeting, a script written around your child, a PA, and certificates for the child and each guide parent. There is no paperwork and no notice period. Six weeks is comfortable. Children of any age can be named, and families often name two or three siblings at once.

What it costs

Australian dollars, GST included. Travel within 30 km is included and $1 per kilometre round trip beyond it. Booking fee $250, which comes off the total. Witnesses supplied at $60 each. Council permits for beach and park ceremonies are passed through at cost.

How far ahead to book

Allow about six weeks for a weekend date in season. Midweek and winter dates are often available at much shorter notice.

How a naming day is put together

It starts with a meeting, usually at home and usually with the child present and unimpressed. The script comes out of that hour: where the name came from, who chose it, what the pregnancy or the adoption was like, what you hope for. Guide parents are named and asked to make a promise in their own words, which is worth warning them about a fortnight ahead rather than on the day.

The ceremony itself is twenty to thirty minutes. A ritual gives it a shape — a candle lit from a family candle, sand poured from separate jars into one, a seedling that goes in the ground afterwards, or a box of letters written by the guests for the child to open at eighteen. Certificates are signed at the end by the guide parents and by the child, in whatever handwriting is available.

Where they are held, and when

Almost always somewhere with a kitchen: a backyard, a hall, a grandparent's house, a park shelter booked for the afternoon. Beaches and council reserves work and need the same permit a wedding would. The real constraint is not the venue, it is the nap — a mid-morning ceremony followed by lunch works better than anything scheduled at four o'clock.

Naming two or three siblings at once is common and costs the same $595, because the meeting and the script are one job whether there is one name in them or three. Older children can and should have a say in their own ceremony; a seven-year-old with a line to read is a seven-year-old who is not asking to go home.

Questions people ask

What is a naming ceremony?

A non-religious way of welcoming a child into a family and a community, and of naming the adults who will stand behind them. It has no legal effect — the birth is registered separately — and it borrows whatever a family wants from older traditions without asking anyone to believe anything.

What are guide parents?

The secular equivalent of godparents. They are adults you name publicly and who make a promise to your child in front of everyone there. There is no legal weight to it, so you can have one or six, and they can be grandparents, friends or older siblings.

How old can a child be for a naming ceremony?

Any age. Babies are the most common, but there is nothing unusual about naming a five-year-old, naming siblings together, or holding a ceremony for an older child joining a family through adoption or a blended household. The script changes; the price does not.

How long does a naming ceremony take?

Twenty to thirty minutes, which is about as long as a small child will tolerate standing still. That leaves room for readings, a candle or sand ritual, promises from guide parents, and the certificates, without the day becoming an endurance event for anyone.

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