guideparent

guideparent noun: a person who, at a child's naming ceremony, agrees to help raise the child (especially in a non-religious setting).

Noun

guideparent (plural guideparents)

A person who, at a child's naming ceremony, agrees to help raise the child (especially in a non-religious setting)
- The guideparents were very nervous during the naming ceremony.
- There’s a section where the guideparents and parents make their pledges to the child, usually promising to be there unconditionally and to support them always.2018, Peter McGuire, “‘We’d be hypocritical standing in a church promising to raise our kids as Catholics’”, in The Irish Times

Our experience is that almost all humanist naming ceremonies have guideparents involved.2019, Richard Godwin, “'It locks you into a disintegrating friendship for life': the new rules of godparenting”, in The Guardian:
Becoming a guideparent gives the person a special role in the baby’s life.2020, Joanna Wojtkowiak, University of Humanistic Studies, Ritualizing Pregnancy and Childbirth in Secular Societies: Exploring Embodied...

plural	guideparents

From guide + parent.

What does guideparent mean?: Guideparent means a person who, at a child's naming ceremony, agrees to help raise the child (especially in a non-religious setting).
How do you use guideparent in a sentence?: Our experience is that almost all humanist naming ceremonies have guideparents involved.
What part of speech is guideparent?: Guideparent is a noun.
What is the plural of guideparent?: The plural of guideparent is guideparents.

Adapted from Wiktionary: guideparent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “guideparent.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/guideparent. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.