India, Feb. 21 -- One of the most daunting things about parenting, perhaps, is knowing that one's child will carry with them everything one bequeaths: trauma, baggage, confidence, love.

Few things will carry forward quite as determinedly as their name. Perhaps for this reason, cultures around the world, and backwards through time, have framed rituals and superstitions around how an infant's name is chosen.

Among the Lapps of Northern Scandinavia, a pregnant woman nearing her delivery date waited to see a deceased ancestor in a dream. The ancestor would tell her which long-gone relative was being reborn as her child. That relative's name would then be given to the child.

If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or extended ...