Författare: Valerie M. Fridland Professor of Linguistics University of N

Everyone has heard of Santa Claus, that chubby, white-bearded, red-suited guy who delivers Christmas presents via a reindeer-powered sleigh.

But have you never wondered how he became a man of so many names? From St. Nick to Santa to Kris Kringle, it’s a marvel that Rudolph isn’t completely confused about whom exactly he is working for.

So, as a linguist who studies the social and historical paths that deliver the words we use, the season’s festive lights and boughs of holly inspired a deep dive into Santa’s past to uncover what name we should really be using for the man in red.

Ho, ho, ho

It might feel like he has been around as long as the North Pole, but the Santa Claus name so frequently mentioned by Americans to refer to old Saint Nicholas come Christmas Eve is a surprisingly recent moniker.

The first written citation for “Santa Claus” does not appear in the U.S. until the late 18th century, where it was alluded to in a mention of a religious event in the New York Gazette: “Last Monday the Anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called St. A Claus, was celebrated at Protestant-Hall.”

Santa Claus with a child at the Trapper School in Nuiqsut, Alaska, on Nov. 29, 2002.
AP Photo/Mark Thiessen

The fact that the first citation appeared in New York is not unusual, given New York’s history until 1664 as a Dutch colony and the ongoing presence of Dutch settlers in that area. This Dutch background is key because Santa Claus is in fact a borrowing into English of the Dutch name Sinter Klaas, which sometimes dialectally appeared as Sante Klaas.

Still, before the 1830s, the substitution of Santa Claus for St. Nick was not in frequent use. In fact, prior to vastly increasing in general popularity toward the latter half of the 1800s, its use earlier that century was often to invoke Dutch heritage and culture, as in the satirical writings of Washington Irving.

For instance, a New York-based satirical magazine of the era had this to say in 1808: “The noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santa claus − of all the saints in the kalendar the most venerated by true hollanders, and their unsophisticated descendants.”

But, by the 1820s, a children’s book introduced Sante Claus in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, suggesting that his modern reputation was established by then. His iconic attire, though, didn’t become his standard uniform until a Coca-Cola advertisement depicted him in red-suited splendor over a century later in 1930. Before then, Santa’s outfits had spanned the range from green and yellow to even patriotic stars and stripes.

Old Saint Nick

The popular term for Santa prior to this period was Saint Nicholas, a name known from the religious observance of the Feast Day of St. Nicholas on Dec. 6. The Dutch name, SinterKlaas, is actually a derivative of the name Saint Nicholas.

Historically speaking, the namesake of Saint Nicholas was the highly charitable bishop of a Roman town called Myra during the fourth century. He had become the patron saint of children and was known as a man of great generosity. His background made him an easy candidate for later becoming associated with Christmas, even though he originally was celebrated on an entirely different day and for a different reason.

Whether going by St. Nick or Santa Claus, the man’s enormous celebrity as the grantor of tangible wishes also turned out to be another legacy of the Dutch, for it was their tradition to give small gifts or sweets on St. Nicholas Day. And so, this Dutch tradition inspired the American mythologizing of a man with a sack of presents on his back to be delivered to children throughout the land.

Saint Nicholas was likely based on the fourth-century Christian saint Nikolaos of Myra, seen here in an 1860 illustration, whose secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Kringle wrinkle

Another name for Santa Claus that grew in popularity in the 1800s was the name Kris Kringle. While Santa Claus was Dutch, Kris Kringle came by way of the Germans who first settled in Pennsylvania and then spread out, particularly in the late 1800s.

The name Kris Kringle, though, was unrelated to Saint Nicholas. Instead, it came from the German word Christkindlein, meaning “Christ child,” referring to the baby in the manger. So, unlike St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle is more directly related to the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth.

Over time, however, the feast of St. Nicholas, also celebrated by German immigrants, became increasingly merged with the celebration of Christmas in the U.S. Given the German influx into the United States was much greater than the Dutch during the 1800s, it is not surprising that the German name competed with the Dutch term during much of that period before Americans eventually decided to settle mainly on Santa Claus.

A man of many names

In the end, whether it’s St. Nick, Santa or Kris Kringle who rides his sleigh into the holidays, the history of how he got his name is one that illustrates a wonderful melding of languages and cultures – a reminder of how differences can merge into a rich and varied part of a culture, celebrated by many. Läs mer…

Few words so rile language purists as the use of the adverb “literally” in a figurative sense, as in, “That movie literally blew my mind.”

But as a linguist who studies how English has changed over the centuries, I can promise that, while it might feel like nails screeching on a blackboard, the use of nonliteral “literally” developed as an organic and dynamic outgrowth of the very human desire to communicate emotion and intensity.

The literal past

The word literal first appeared in English in the late 14th century, borrowed from French. In turn, French “literal” came from Latin “littera,” with the original meaning of “pertaining to alphabetic letters.” It is this same root that delivered to English the words “literate” and “literature,” both harking back to the idea of knowing one’s “letters.”

In early English use, literal referred to the straightforward meaning recoverable from reading a religious text, as in this example from the Wycliffe Bible dating to 1383, “Holy scripture hath iiij vndirstondingis; literal, allegorik, moral, and anagogik.” The word literal as used here contrasts a direct – literal – reading of scripture’s meaning to other more symbolic or metaphorical ones.

A page from the 1383 Wycliffe Bible, a translation that used the word literal to describe ‘Holy scripture.’
Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

By the late 16th century, though, literal begins to be used not just in reference to a type of reading but also as a way to emphasize that one wants one’s words to be taken literally.

This development is already a semantic leap in that, when used this way – as in, “John literally died of thirst” – the word provides no meaning contribution other than emphasizing to a listener that a speaker means it precisely as said. After all, assuming John did indeed die owing to a lack of hydration, what does a speaker really gain by saying “He literally died of thirst” versus simply “He died of thirst”?

The advantage is that using “literally” signals that what was said was unusual, unbelievable or remarkable in some way, steering a listener toward a literal rather than a perhaps more likely figurative interpretation.

After all, dying of thirst is not something you hear about every day, though suffering from thirst to the point where one feels like dying is a more universal experience. Such pragmatic enhancement of the word’s original meaning hints at how its modern marking of strong emphasis came into play.

Bleached beyond recognition

The second piece of the puzzle of how “literally” became nonliteral requires a brief foray into how word meanings organically evolve over time as they are put to work by speakers.

A very germane example comes from “very,” a word in which its most common meaning – “extremely” – is but a shadow of its original sense.

In Middle English, “very” carried the meaning of “actual” or “true,” as in being “verray in worde and dede” – that is, true in word and deed. Yet, when something is true, particularly when used in its “actual” sense, it suggests that it embodies the highest degree of whatever quality is described as true.

So, for instance, if someone is a “true fool,” they exhibit such a high degree of foolishness they are taken for an actual fool. Used this way, two distinct but related meanings – “true” and “to an extreme degree” – come to coexist.

By the 16th century, intensity rather than trueness had become the word very’s primary sense, through a process that linguists refer to as “semantic bleaching.” Interestingly, words whose meanings involve truth, such as very, really and truly, are particularly prone to semantic bleaching. And “truth,” as in “exactly as said or written,” takes us back to “literally.”

A little less literal

Recall that “literally” once pertained only to contrasting a literal versus metaphorical reading.

But, as with “very,” by the 16th century, its meaning shifts away from this purely referential meaning to a more rhetorical one: “Literally” had shifted to emphasizing a speaker’s literalness and flagging it as remarkable in some way.

At that point, providing expressivity rather than a true or literal reading had become its primary role. Just consider an argument between spouses, where one says “I literally called you three times.” The purpose of “literally” here is really only one of underscoring the implication that calling three times was excessive and unusual.

From there to hyperbolically saying “I was literally dying of thirst” is just one step further down the road of semantic bleaching. The figurative reading becomes more and more possible, as speakers capitalize exclusively on the expressive force rather than the word’s former shell of literality.

This is really no different than saying something like “I am truly dying over here” when one is frustrated, but is, in fact, not actually dying. It is intensity conveyed, not imminent death, as “truly” has moved from marking truth to marking emphasis.

Word meanings organically evolve over time as they are put to work by speakers.
jaouad.K/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Sign of the times

But what of using “literally” to mean something seemingly contradictory to its original meaning?

On that front, it is certainly far from the first word in English to have shifted toward its opposite. For instance, when in 1667’s “Paradise Lost” John Milton writes, “The Serpent … with brazen Eyes And hairie Main terrific,” the word “terrific” is absolutely intended in its original sense of “terrifying”“ as opposed to our modern ”fabulous” take.

Sometimes, conflicting senses even exist at the same time. Think of how “clipping” can be about cutting something away or pulling something together. Likewise, consider the often oppositionally employed verb “to cleave,” with which one either tears apart or sticks together. In this bigger semantic picture, using “literally” nonfiguratively is really nothing to get worked up over.

The gist is that language changes because of how it finds itself most gainfully employed by speakers as it winds its way through time.

Literally’s main problem is that, unlike “terrific” or “very,” its semantic past has not yet faded from collective memory. But for those who still cling to its literalness despite the fact that Frances Brooke, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain all embraced its figurative glory, it may simply be time to literally let go. Läs mer…