Xenia

Meaning of Xenia

Xenia is a sun-warmed gift from ancient Greece, her four syllables echoing with the very ideal of φιλοξενία—sacred hospitality—by which every wanderer was welcomed, every hearth flung open, and every stranger turned friend; in Latin lands the name slipped softly into prayers and poetry alike, so that today it feels at once classical and cosmopolitan, a silken thread stitching Athens to Sevilla, St. Petersburg to Santa Fe. Pronounced ZEE-nee-uh, she glides from tongue to ear like a zephyr over olive groves, carrying within her sound the promise of generosity and fearless curiosity toward the wider world. Saints and martyrs have borne her, orchids and corals have borrowed her aura, and even the star Xenia in the Cygnus constellation nods to her quietly hospitable light. Though she has never clamored for center stage on American birth rolls, she has danced there for more than a century—an elegant constant, modest in rank yet rich in resonance—inviting modern parents to bestow on their daughters a name that is both antique and adventurous, tender and intrepid, a lyrical invitation to greet life, and every fellow traveler in it, with an open heart.