Necronym: the effects of bearing a dead little sibling’s name

ABSTRACT

This study analyses the emotional experiences of people who bear the necronym of a deceased sibling in order to describe the possible psychological implications of this experience. Using the grounded theory approach in interviews with 22 Italian participants and qualitative analysis of resulting texts, we found that some of the main themes that emerged confirmed the figure of the ‘replacement child’ described by previous literature. The three fundamental themes were: ‘complicated grief, removal and fear of death’; ‘identity problems related to the necronym’; and ‘sad gratitude’. The study highlights some existential difficulties that spring from this experience and, after reviewing these themes in detail, we present a brief discussion on whether to dissuade bereaved parents from naming a new child with the necronym of a deceased child.

KEYWORDS:

• Necronym
• replacement child
• perinatal grief
• complicated grief
• personal identity

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Master in “Death studies & The End of Life” who allowed us to use the web site and Facebook page for research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Regarding this choice, Brosius (1995, p. 143) states: ‘I should note why I prefer the term “death-name” over the more recent neologism “necronym” […]. The Greek word nekros refers to a dead body, not to the event of death or bereavement. Most English terms incorporating the Greek root preserve this direct reference to dead bodies or dead matter (necrophagy, necrophilia). The connotations of the term “necronym” are, therefore, at odds with what these terms represent. Thus, while the term “death-name” may not be ideal, the term “necronym” is inaccurate. A perhaps better term would be something such as “thanatonym”, though such a neologism would likely introduce yet more confusion into the literature’

2. ISTAT, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, states: ‘the Italian mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world, better than in the U.S.A., but higher than in Sweden (7.3 and 3.0 per 1,000 live births, respectively)’ (https://www.istat.it/en/archivio/109877). According to childmortality.org, the death per 1,000 live births has steadily decreased in Italy, from 89 per 1,000 live births in 1950 to 3 per 1,000 live births in 2018 (https://childmortality.org/data/Italy)..

3. The two numbers following the quotations indicate their position in the dataset after the coding process: the first number refers to the ‘primary document’ to which the given quotation belongs (each document produced from the interviews is marked with a number). The second is a progressive number indicating the order in which the quotations in a given document have been encoded.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ines Testoni

Ines Testoni is psychologist, psychotherapist and philosopher, professor of Palliative Psychology and director of the Master in Death Studies & The End of Life at University of Padova (Italy). She is the author of a hundred articles and about twenty volumes, is a member of the bilateral table MIUR - Ministry of Health for the teaching of palliative care in degree courses in Psychology and won an Erasmus Plus project on death education for palliative psychology.

Maurizio Dorsa

Maurizio Dorsa is Clinical psychologist and co-author of some scientific publications on the theme of death and dying, trainee in some hospices in Italy and Brasil.

Erika Iacona

Erika Iacona is Clinical psychologist and research fellow at University of Padova (Italy), she is co-author of some scientific publications on the theme of death and dying, assistant at the Master in “Death Studies & The End Of Life“.

Giorgio Scalici

Giorgio Scalici (Palermo 1986) is a Post-Doc researcher at NOVA University Lisbon. He obtained his Master degree in Ethnomusicology at University of Rome “La Sapienza” and his PhD in Religious Studies at Durham University. His fields of interest include death studies, indigenous culture, study of religion, ethnomusicology and the anthropology of emotion.