Looking for a New Name for The Aostach

I've decided to try to come up with a new name for the Aostach. Originally it was Jiyadj which, believe it or not, was from a Klingon dictionary and had something to do with their rite of passage (hard to recall since it has been 10 years or so) and that has been what we called it at home. But, it sounds too much like Jihad and so before writing the book or publishing any blogs, we renamed it to Aostach. But, that name doesn't flow off the tongue well and we never did switch to calling it that at home.

So, I'm after a new name; if you have any ideas, PLEASE send them my way.
Some things that might help (that I've been looking at):

"Iter" is the root for passage and "maturus" is the root for mature, so I tried some combination of those, but didn't come up with anything great.

Madura is the Spanish word for mature and "edad madura" means mature age. This sounds better, but it doesn't make sense to me to use Spanish (why that over any other language). Greek/Latin make some sense, but I haven't found a good combination there yet...

Any thoughts you send my way are greatly appreciated (you can comment on this topic or send me email).

Thanks, Sean

Aostach - a modern rite of passage

One of the aspects of spirituality and humanism that we discuss on our http://spirutualhumanist.info site is the need for a rite of passage. Rites like this help mark the natural progression through life and are some attempt at assuring you are ready for the next "level". Many religions have these, but atheists and humanists tend not to. This post (and the ones to follow) will talk about the program we call Aostach that my wife and I designed and is part of my discussion on parenting in a humanist household.

We have four children and we have always spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the best way to raise children in modern America. One of the things we realized early on was that children no longer have a rite of passage or any point where they can say they are now an adult and ready for the world.

We set out defining a set of criteria that the children had to pass with a final test as a kind of modern rite of passage. We now have one through this process and two in the middle of it. We have spoken to quite a few parents (and some want-to-be parents) about it and they all thought it was such a great idea that we decided a while back to turn it into a book. It will [probably] be called "Aostach - A Modern Rite of Passage". Aostach is a Gaelic word meaning Adult.

I plan to put some of the concepts out on this blog and hope to get feedback from anyone reading it.

The Aostach is broken into a number of sections with each section having 6 to 10 topics that the child has to learn or demonstrate. The sections include the following:

1. Domestic Skills


2. Financial Skills


3. Safety and Survival


4. Physical fitness


5. Daily practical knowledge


6. Ethics, Morals, Social Responsibilities and Manners

You can see that it is a diverse set of knowledge and abilities. The culmination of all of it is a somewhat difficult test that the child has to perform.

The next blog will be about the first section of the Aostach, Domestic Skills.