The Meaning of Christmas Name

There are many Christmas names around the world and their meaning is different. The English word Christmas comes from a phrase Christ’s mass. In Old English, people spelled it as Crīstesmæsse and Cristes-messe, and in Middle English it became Cristemasse. The earliest mention of the word in text dates from 1038. Christ is an English version of the Greek word Khrīstos (Χριστός), which is itself a translation of the Hebrew word Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ) – Messiah, while mas comes from Latin missa – Eucharist. The history of the term Xmas is also pretty ancient – the X comes from the use of Greek letter “χ” (pronounced similarly to “ch” in Christ) as an abbreviation for Christ.

Other English names

Although Christmas is by far the most common name of this holiday, people also know it by other names. Firstly, they often mention it as The Nativity which is derived from Latin nātīvitās, meaning “birth”, and referring to the birth of Christ. However, the word Nativity is also related to an old Anglo-Saxon word Nātiuiteð. It used to denote a winter feast occurring on the day of Winter Solstice. People translated it as Midwinter. The early English Christians obviously saw a connection between the birth of Christ and the “rebirth” of the Sun. Another old English term is Yule, which today people preserve in the phrases like Yuletide and Yule log. It is derived from the Old English word Gēola and Old Norse word jól which referred to the already mentioned midwinter period.

Christmas Names in other languages

Christmas names in other languages also rely on the same sources as English. In Romance languages, they are based on the Latin word for birth – Navidad in Spanish, Natal in Portuguese and Noël in French. In Northern Europe it is called Jul, invoking the name of the old pagan festival.
However, some languages rely on other sources: Serbian and Croatian word Božić is a diminutive of the word Bog – God, meaning that in these languages people call Christmas “Little God” – referring to Jesus as the son of God. The German word Weihnachten is also unusual – it means “the holy night”.

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