Anastasia

Anastasia comes from the Greek anastasis, meaning resurrection. Early Christians gave it to daughters as a plain statement of faith, and one of them, Saint Anastasia of Sirmium, was martyred and later honored on the twenty-second of December, close to Christmas. So the short meaning and the feast day sat side by side from the beginning.

In Russia the name took deep root. It belonged to tsarinas and, most famously, to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of the last tsar, whose disappearance after 1918 fed decades of rumor that she had somehow survived.

Polish parents who choose it usually reach for Anastazja, the home spelling that lands on a class register somewhere near Ania and Barbara. The letters shift a little, yet the word underneath holds: resurrection.