The “International Women’s Day” has been celebrated for more than 100 years.  While at that time women were primarily concerned with the right to vote, the struggle for general equality has been going on until today. Even though things have already changed in some respects, it cannnot be denied that there is still plenty of room for improvement. It is about the protest against outdated role models, the gender pay gap, the abolishment of any discrimination - and about the equality of all genders. Clara Zetkin, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler – just a small selection of well-known feminists who struggled for the rights of women. Feminists such as Louise Aston. Louise was a revolutionary and a writer; she is considered as the prototype of female self-determination. According to the death register, she had exactly one role: “Wife”.
Today, on the World Women’s Day, we are less than ever content with this. Here you find out more about the life and work of Louise Aston.

2023/02/14 Today, on 14 February, we celebrate the day of love! The orirgin of Valentine’s Day will probably always remain controversial. Commonly, this custom is traced back to the the third century AD, when Saint Valentine supposedly married couples despite a ban and was thus stylized as the lovers’ patron saint.  Whether romantic tradition or clever marketing trick: Celebrating love is never wrong. We from Archion do not sweeten your day with flowers or chocolate but with an excerpt from a marriage register. It chronicles a couple getting divorced - just to remarry shortly after. Thus, a happy end of the very special kind. In this sense: Happy Valentine’s Day!

2023/01/18 Every year, expectant parents are searching for the perfect names for their children. Many of them seek inspiration by rankings and trends. Which first names made it to the German top ten in 2022?

As in the previous year, Emilia ranked first among the most popular names for girls, followed by Mia and Sophia. Among boys, Noah came in first, relegating Matteo to second place. Elias is also highly rated. According to the federal statistics which is in part based on the data of the registry offices, there continue to remain regional differences with respect to the names selected. Thus, parents in Northern Germany tend to be more innovative, with a continuing bias towards Scandinavian influences, while people in the South tend to hang on to fashionable names. Then again, last year parents in Eastern Germany often chose retro names such as Kurt and - currently gaining ground - Erwin.

What about Apollonia? Cleophe? Or Laux? If you are searching for names beyond the current trends, we recommend looking into the Archion forum.

Here, users collect and share rare, exceptional, and (wrongly) forgotten first names they come across during their research. A unique source of inspiration for expectant parents and grandparents!

To the collection in the forum

2022/12/29 Many of us use the time “between the years” to relax after the Christmas bustle and to shift into idle speed. As our calendar year is clearly defined, there is basically no “between”. So where does the saying come from that nowadays describes the time span between Christmas and New Year’s Eve?

It goes back to the frequent shifts of the end-of-year dates in the course of our history. In the Roman Empire, from A.D. 153 onwards the new year began on January 1. In large parts of Europe, January 6 was later considered as the beginning of the year according to Christian understanding, whereas the Julian calendar defined the end of the year as December 24. Thus, the time span until January 6 lay “between the years”. After a few changes, the Gregorian reform in 1582 specified January 1 as New Year’s Day. For confessional reasons, however, even the new Gregorian calendar was then interpreted in different ways which again resulted in different definitions of the period “between the years”. Only in 1691, December 31 was ultimately defined as the last day of the year. The saying, however, has survived until today.