Nepomuk the Great
Today, a friend of mine told me the name of his new creation (well, his and his wife’s): Nepomuk. At first, I thought he was joking, but then he explained me seriously that Nepomuk was the name of the saint who who was thrown from a bridge in Prague with a big stone towed around his feet, because he didn’t tell the king if his wife had sex with another guy. And with a quick review in wikipedia I found that he was right, John of Nepomuk:
John of Nepomuk (German: Johann von Nepomuk) or Johann Nepomucen (Czech: Jan Nepomucký) is the most popular national saint of Bohemia. By a legend that he was the confessor of the Queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional, he has been made into the first martyr of the seal of confession and a patron against calumnies and, because of the manner of his death, against floods.
And it seems like my friend is not the only one to give the name of Nepomuk to his child. There was also Johann Nepomuk Hummel, composer and musician, who was educated first by Mozart and then by the great Salieri, and became good friend with Beethoven. And there was Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Adolf Hitler’s maternal great-grandfather and possibly also his paternal grandfather.
Update: in Spanish, St. John of Nepomuk is San Juan Nepomuceno
