There's a tradition in Armenian families -- older than anyone alive can remember and still practiced quietly today -- of naming children after their grandparents or great-grandparents. Not always immediately, and not always the obvious match (you might name your son after your wife's father if your own son was named after yours), but the rule of thumb is that a name in the family doesn't get retired. It gets carried forward.

The reasoning is partly religious, partly cultural, partly something quieter than either. Armenian Apostolic baptism includes a name. The priest asks "What name is given to this child?" before the cross is made. A name chosen with intention -- chosen because someone you loved had it -- turns a baptism into a continuity. The infant isn't just being welcomed into a faith. They're being told, before they can understand the words, that they are connected to someone specific who came before.

This is one reason Armenian first names tend toward the deliberate. Anahit, Mariam, Hasmik, Tigran, Vahan, Hovsep. Each name has a meaning and most have a history -- a saint, a king, a grandmother, a great-uncle who survived something. The name carries a small file of who that person was and what they meant. When parents name a baby Levon because of a grandfather named Levon, they are saying: this is not a new person who happens to share a name. This is a continuation.

That's what makes embroidering a child's name onto something different from printing it on something. The everyday name bib Lusik machine-embroiders with your child's name will be in the kitchen, on the floor, in the wash, in the diaper bag, on the high chair, every single day. The name is right there on the fabric. The blanket she hand-cross-stitches with the first letter will go in the crib, on the stroller, in the photos, eventually in a drawer for later, eventually maybe into the next child's hands. The name and the letter are physical objects.

In a culture that has spent a century carrying names across continents and decades, putting a name on cloth is not just decoration. It is a way of saying: we remembered. We are still here. This name is still being said.