Octobering

Octobering was a naming ceremony which occurred during the early era of the Soviet Union, which involved giving a name to a newborn, introduced by the state on the official basis of Marxist–Leninist atheism as an attempt to replace the religious tradition of christening.

[1][2] The term serves as a translation of two synonymous Soviet neologisms: Oktyabryenie, coined in an analogy to Kreshcheniye, literally, the sacrament of "baptism", and Oktyabriny instead of Krestiny [ru], the latter being a family celebration on the occasion of baptism.

Since the religious symbol of the Christian cross was replaced with the revolutionary symbol of Red Star (Russian: "krasnaya zvezda"), the ceremony was also called zvezdiny, in an analogy with krestiny, the term "to Christen" (Russian: okrestit) was replaced with the term ozvezdit.

Despite being short-lived,[4] this so-called new Soviet rite contributed to the proliferation of the new names based on revolutionary phraseology, such as Oktyabrina, Vladlen (for Vladimir Lenin), etc.

[2] In the 1988 film Heart of a Dog there is an episode where a mother who brought a newborn baby girl to ozvezdit was given a choice of "revolutionary names": Barrikada, Bebelina, ...