Our own name for the feast agrees with one German provincial term Christfest. Christmas now and then occurs in old registers as a Christian name, as at Froxfield, Hants, in 1574, and is also used as a surname; but Noel is more usual for Christmas-born children.
The Eastern Church did not originally observe the Nativity at all, contenting itself with the day when the great birth was manifested to the Gentiles, and for this reason there is no genuine Greek name for Christmas-day, and Natalia, though now used as a Greek woman’s name, is of Latin origin.
The Slavonic nations have translated Christmas into Bozieni, and their Christmas children, among the Slovak part of the race, are the boys, Bozo, Bozko, Bozicko; the girls, Bozena.[[90]]
[90]. Church Festivals and their Household Words (Christian Remembrancer); Michaelis; Butler; Jameson; Grimm.
Section III.—The Epiphany.
The twelfth day after Christmas was the great day with the Eastern Church, by whom it was called Θεοφανεία, from Θεός and φαίνω (to make known, i.e., God’s manifestation), or Ἐπιφάνεια (forth showing).
The ancient Greek Church celebrated on the 6th of January the birth of Christ, His manifestation to the Gentiles, and the baptism in the Jordan. Their titles, Theophania and Epiphania, were adopted by the Latins, and when the Latin feast of the Nativity was accepted by the Greek Church, this latter was frequently called Epiphania, while the true manifestation-day was called by a name meaning the lights, from the multitude of candles in the churches in honour of the Light of the World and the Light of Baptism.
But in the West, it was the visit of the Magi that gave the strongest impress to the festival. Early did tradition fix their number at three, probably in allusion to the three races of man descended from the sons of Noah, and soon they were said to be descendants of the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, from whom they derived the expectation of the Star of Jacob, and they were promoted to be kings of Tarsus, Saba, and Nubia, also to have been baptized by St. Thomas, and afterwards martyred. Their corpses were supposed to be at that store-house of relics, Constantinople, whence the Empress Helena caused them to be transported to Milan by an Italian, from whom a noble family at Florence obtained the surname of Epiphania. Frederick Barbarossa carried them to Cologne.
By the eleventh century, these three kings had received names, for they are found written over against their figures in a painting of that date, and occur in the breviary of Mersburg. Though their original donor is unknown, their Oriental sound makes it probable that he was a pilgrim-gatherer of Eastern legends. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, are not according to European fancy, and are not easy to explain. The first may either be the Persian, gendshber (treasure master), or else be taken from the red or green stone called yashpah in the East, ἵασπις in Greek, jasper in Latin. This was the only one of these names ever used in England, where it was once common. Gasparde is the French feminine; in English the masculine is Jasper. It is extremely common in Germany; and has suffered the penalty of popularity, for Black Kaspar is a name of the devil, and Kaspar is a Jack Pudding.