Tonia's Name Day

17th January

Tonia, the name has a description or meaning which is possibly 'beyond price' (Latin - one of the patrician Roman families)

Tonia has a Name day of 17th January, please check our history page to find out how this was derived

This description represents the Female usage of the name.

This name is a variant of the original name Anthony

There is also an alternative celebration date of 13th June for this Name day and represents different religious interpretations or different festival days for Saints

St Anthony is a patron saint of the following:

Symbols are often associated with Saints, it often helped in the middle ages when people were unable to read thus Anthony has the following symbols associated

Historically Famous Tonias

There are two famous St Anthonys in the Church. The first, Anthony the Great, is often known as the 'father of monasticism', for it was he who gathered together many of the fourth-century hermits who had fled from worldly distractions into the desert. These first Desert Fathers were famous for their lives of pathological self-denial and prayer; St Athanasius' biography of Anthony, however, shows him to have been a wise and moderate man, even though he suffered terrifying temptations through visions. He is supposed to have died around 365 at the age of 105. The smallest pig in a litter and the smallest bell in a carillon are often called the 'tanto ny', thus they have become his symbols: the little pig for the mortal flesh he conquered, and the bell as the traditional symbol of hermits.

The second very well-loved St Anthony was Portuguese (1195-1231), a Franciscan monk born in Lisbon, although he is known as St Anthony of Padua where he is buried. His reputation for finding lost things is based on a story that a novice once 'borrowed' his prayer book; Anthony prayed for its recovery and the novice returned it after finding himself tormented by a terrible vision. Anthony's life's work was not finding lost objects, but rather being 'the hammer of the heretics' - having been commissioned in a vision by Francis himself to go and preach, mainly in Italy and France. A tale is told that Anthony shamed the people of Rimini, who would not listen to him, by preaching to the fish in the river, causing them to stand on their tails and listen devoutly. Although he is often pictured as a gentle man, with a Christ-child and lily, Anthony should not be thought of as anyone but a man of great intelligence and energy, full of the Franciscan passion for helping the poor.