Kseniia

Kseniia comes from the Greek xenía, hospitality, the welcome a household owes a guest. Behind it stands an older word, xénos, the stranger who turns up at your door. In Ukraine the name settled into ordinary life, spelled Kseniia, while the shorter Ksenia handles the school register and the roll-call at the start of term.

The meaning is unusually direct. Plenty of names pick up a virtue centuries after the sound first existed. Here the Greek word for hospitality is more or less the name, barely dressed up.

One bearer keeps the sense alive. Xenia of Saint Petersburg, venerated in the Orthodox calendar, gave away her house and lived among strangers, which suits a name built from the word for guest. A Ukrainian child called Kseniia today inherits that plain Greek gift: hospitality.