Holiday Calendar

National Vincent Day

Next celebratedFriday, January 22, 2027

Every Vincent shares a name day with a deacon killed at Valencia in 304 and with the painter who nearly always signed just 'Vincent', because outside the Netherlands people struggled with Van Gogh.

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJanuary 22
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
~2022
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The feast came first; the name day arrived unsigned.

No founder, proclamation, launch announcement or trademark filing for National Vincent Day has been located. The oldest surviving trace of it is a day-listing page captured by the Internet Archive on 19 August 2022, which is why the year is given as approximate; 22 January had already been the feast of Vincent of Saragossa since the fourth century, and no source links the two.

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INTRO

The city that spends both its holidays on one name

Spanish law lets a town keep two public holidays of its own choosing. The city of València spends both of them on a man called Vincent.

One falls in spring, for Vincent Ferrer, patron of the wider Valencian Community. The other is 22 January, for Vincent the Martyr, the deacon València keeps as its patron. No other municipality in the regional government's official working calendar doubles up like that.

National Vincent Day falls on that same 22 January. It carries none of València's legal weight and none of the feast's antiquity. The oldest surviving trace of it is a web page saved in August 2022.

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ORIGINS

Vincent Day history

CHAPTER 01

A name built out of winning

Vincent arrived in English through French, from the Latin Vincentius. Behind it sits vincens, "conquering", from the verb vincere, to overcome. The name reached England around 1200 and has been in use there since.

The man who fixed it in the calendar did no conquering at all. Vincent was a deacon from Saragossa and, by the Vatican's own account, a great preacher. The same calendar records that he was arrested in the persecutions under Diocletian and martyred at Valencia in 304.

He was venerated as a saint immediately, and his feast was fixed on 22 January.

CHAPTER 02

The most famous Vincent used half his name

Vincent van Gogh signed with his first name in a century when painters used the surname or the full name. The Van Gogh Museum published the first systematic study of those signatures in August 2026, written by the researcher Julia Engelmayer.

He gave two reasons himself. Writing to his brother Theo in December 1883, at a hard point with his father, he said he was not a "Van Gogh" in character and not much like the rest of the family. The blunter reason was that abroad nobody could pronounce it.

The signing tracked his confidence rather than his output. He signed nothing before 1884, three years after he took up oils, and after he entered the institution at Saint-Remy he almost stopped.

In Auvers, in the last year of his life, he signed a single painting. It was the portrait of Adeline Ravoux, and he gave it to his sitter.

CHAPTER 03

The name day arrived with no paperwork

National Vincent Day has no founder on record. There is no proclamation, no launch announcement, no trademark filing, and no organisation that runs it today.

What can be dated is when it began to circulate. The oldest surviving listing was captured by the Internet Archive on 19 August 2022, and the registry that formally registers such days has never carried it at all, though other days on that same site are archived from 2015.

The feast beside it has been kept since the fourth century. Nothing in the record connects the two, so the shared date is best read as a coincidence of the calendar rather than a decision anyone wrote down.

in future my name must be put in the catalogue the way I sign it on the canvases, i.e. Vincent and not Vangogh, for the excellent reason that people here wouldn't be able to pronounce that name
Vincent van GoghLetter to his brother Theo, March 1888
a very outrageous red signature, because I wanted a red note in the green
Vincent van GoghOn the signature he added to Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, 1888

TIMELINE

Timeline

A deacon is killed at Valencia

Vincent of Saragossa is arrested in the persecutions under Diocletian and put to death at Valencia. He is venerated as a saint at once, and 22 January becomes his feast.

The name reaches England

Vincent enters English use, carried over from French, and behind that from the Latin Vincentius.

Van Gogh signs a painting for the first time

Three years after taking up oil paint, the painter puts his name to a canvas for the first time.

One last signature at Auvers

In the final year of his life he signs a single painting, the portrait of Adeline Ravoux, and gives it to his sitter.

Burgundy starts a travelling wine feast

The Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin holds the first Saint-Vincent Tournante at Chambolle-Musigny, honouring the winegrowers' patron.

The name day leaves its first footprint

The Internet Archive captures a National Vincent Day listing on 19 August, the oldest surviving trace of the observance.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Vincent Day Matters

Contest

València's council has to vote for its two Vincents. In 2024 the opposition wanted one of the days for the Fallas instead.

The pair is not an inheritance. Approving it for 2024, València's council recorded the split: the governing PP and Vox in favour, the Socialist group against, Compromis abstaining. The Socialists wanted 18 March given to the Fallas instead, and the councillor for festivals, Monica Gil, argued that a third holiday would damage the city's economic activity.

Statute

The council counts to fourteen in its own minutes

The two local days sit inside a national allowance. The regional gazette quotes the governing statute: paid, non-recoverable holidays may not exceed fourteen in a year, and the local pair is fixed on the municipal council's own proposal. Setting the 2024 calendar, the council listed the twelve national and regional days its residents already had, added 22 de gener and 8 d'abril, and noted that the sum came out exactly at the statutory limit. Both are minuted as retribuïts i no recuperables, paid and not to be made up later.

Endurance

A name that never peaked and never left

Vincent appears in fourteen of the fifteen top-200 decade tables the Social Security Administration publishes, missing only the 1880s. Of the twenty-two boys' names present in all fourteen from the 1890s onward, only Vincent and Wesley never once ranked inside the top 50, while the other twenty all reached it. Its strongest decade was the 1910s at 68th, which is also where the claim stops: set the bar at the top 75 instead and no name is excluded at all.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Vincent Day by the Numbers

133 of 840
Van Gogh paintings carrying his signature
94th
Vincent's rank, US boys born 1926 to 2025
325,266
US boys named Vincent since 1926
2 weeks
Don McLean's Vincent at UK number one

GOOD TO KNOW

National Vincent Day Around the World

València, Spain

The city keeps 22 January with a Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Cathedral, followed by a General Procession that leaves through the Puerta de los Hierros at 11:30 and carries the saint's float on a two-hour route past Plaza de la Reina and Plaza de L'Almoina. On the eve, the parish named for him celebrates a Mozarabic Rite mass that the city says is the only one in Spain apart from Toledo's.

Burgundy, France

Winegrowers keep Vincent as their patron with the Saint-Vincent Tournante, which moves to a different wine village every year on the last weekend of January. Tens of thousands attend, and the day still includes a church service, a procession of the Saint Vincent societies, the local bishop, and the induction of the village's oldest vignerons.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Vincent Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Settle which Vincent you mean

The 22 January calendar carries two saints of the name, the Spanish deacon and Vincent Pallotti, and a third Vincent, Vincent de Paul, sits on 27 September. The Vatican's own listing for the date is the quickest way to check which one a given church, street or school is named for.

ASK

Ask an English speaker to say Van Gogh

The painter gave up his surname in print partly because people outside the Netherlands could not manage it. Hand the name to a few friends and listen: the reason a signature reads Vincent is audible in about ten seconds, which is faster than any explanation of it.

LOOK

Look the name up in the birth records

The Social Security Administration publishes free decade and century tables of US given names. Vincent traces a flat, stubborn line across them, and the same tables will do the same job for any name you care about.

PUT

Put the last weekend of January in the diary

Burgundy's travelling Saint Vincent feast names its host village well in advance through the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin. It is the one place where the name is still attached to a working trade rather than to a person.

TELL

Tell a Vincent it is their day

A name day only exists in the telling, which is the whole of the mechanism and most of the point. A message, a card, or the story of the deacon and the painter will cover it.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Vincent Day?

1 / 8

What does the Latin root behind Vincent mean?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing, so it is a normal working day. The same date is a paid local public holiday in the city of València, but that is the feast of the city's patron saint rather than the name day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources
11primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
Generalitat Valenciana2026
Calendari 2026: dies habils
The regional government's official working calendar, listing each municipality's two local public holidays for 2026, including València's pair, both of which honour a Saint Vincent.
View source
Diari Oficial de la Generalitat Valenciana13 January 2026
Resolucio de 13 de gener de 2026 on local paid holidays
The official gazette entry that quotes the governing statute: paid, non-recoverable holidays may not exceed fourteen a year, of which exactly two are local, set on the municipal council's proposal.
View source
Ajuntament de Valencia14 November 2023
El Ple aprova els dies 22 de gener i 8 d'abril com a festius locals de 2024
The city council's own record of approving its two local holidays, naming both saints, showing the party split in the vote and the rejected proposal to give a day to the Fallas instead.
View source
Vatican News
Saint of the day: calendar of saints for 22 January
The Holy See's own calendar for the date, recording Vincent of Saragossa as a deacon arrested under Diocletian and martyred at Valencia in 304, and listing Vincent Pallotti on the same day.
View source
Van Gogh Museum13 August 2026
New Research Reveals the Story Behind Van Gogh's 'Vincent' Signature
The museum's announcement of the first systematic study of the painter's signatures, giving the count of 133 signed works among 840 known paintings and the years in which he did and did not sign.
View source
Van Gogh Museum
Why Did Vincent Van Gogh Sign His Paintings with Vincent and Not His Surname?
The museum's reference page reproducing the letters of December 1883 and March 1888 in which the painter explains, in his own words, why he signed with his first name.
View source
US Social Security Administration2025 data
Top Names Over the Last 100 Years
The agency's published century table, ranking Vincent 94th among boys' names with 325,266 occurrences, drawn from a stated universe of 180,126,408 boy births in 1926 to 2025.
View source
US Social Security Administration2025 data
Top Names of the 1910s
One of the fifteen decade tables of the 200 most common US given names per decade, the series from which Vincent's rank in every decade from the 1890s to the 2020s was read.
View source
Official Charts Company
Vincent by Don McLean: full chart history
The UK's official chart compiler's record of the single, showing a peak of number one, two weeks at the top and fifteen weeks on chart from May to August 1972.
View source
Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin
Saint-Vincent Tournante wine festival
The organising brotherhood's own account of the festival it created in 1938, its last-weekend-of-January timing, its rotation between villages and the numbered list of host villages since the first edition.
View source
Visit Valencia
Feast of Saint Vincent the Martyr in Valencia
The city tourism board's programme for 21 and 22 January, setting out the Cathedral mass, the procession route and timing, and the Mozarabic Rite mass held on the eve.
View source
Additional coverage
Online Etymology Dictionary
Vincent: origin and history
Douglas Harper's entry deriving Vincent from Latin Vincentius and vincere, to overcome, and dating the name's introduction in England to about 1200.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Christopher Columbus: The second and third voyages
The account of the third voyage recording that its six ships left Sanlucar de Barrameda on 30 May 1498, which is what rules out a sighting of Saint Vincent on 22 January that year.
View source
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