Christian names beginning with X

Meaning: Greek "hospitality" or "stranger" (xenos).

Figure: Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg; eighteenth-century fool for Christ (c. 1719-1803).

Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg is the eighteenth-century Russian widow who, after the sudden death of her husband, took up the difficult vocation of fool for Christ, giving away her possessions and spending the rest of her life in radical poverty and prayer. Canonized in 1988. The Orthodox calendar commemorates her on January 24.