Saturday, March 7, 2009

Nombres y Comprades de Pila


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En America, y especialmente en Nuevo Mejico,  y entre los clases medio y bajo, el compadre significa una clase de amistad indsisoluble, de protecction decidida, manifesta y de substancia.

Tambien hay compadres de confirmacion.

In America, and especially in New Mexico, and amongst the middle and lower classes, compadres signify a type of friendship that cannot be broken, offering decided protection, manafisted in substance.

Compadres were special, compadres de pila even more so.  Growing up I did not realize what pila meant. I heard the term often, used thus; "Fulano de Tal es mi compadre de pila." 

It means the baptismal font and thus compadres de pila are people who baptized our children. The baptismal font, in my eyes, is the birdbath looking thing you hold a baby over while the priest pours holy water over his forehead and the padrinos de pila look on when the baby is being baptized.

The compadres de pila have the obligation of insuring that the baptized child is raised as a Catholic shoud the parents be unable to do so. So they signed up for a big chore should something drastic happen.

And also "nombres de pila" is/are the name given to you at birth. Not the name given to you at confirmation, not the name you took later, not your nick name, maybe not the name you use now, not the name you took when you got married. The name you were given at birth, by your padrinos. 


1 comment:

M.J. said...

Great blog! I left a few comments on some of your posts.