Anastasia

views updated May 17 2018

Anastasia female forename, deriving from the Greek, Anastasis ‘Resurrection’. Anastasia was the name of the youngest daughter (1901–?18) of the last tsar of Russia, now thought to have died with the rest of her family at Yekaterinburg; for many years there were rumours that one or more of the family had escaped the massacre, and a number of claimants appeared.
St Anastasia, martyr and married virgin, is said to have died at Sirmium. By the 5th century she was venerated in Rome as a Roman martyr, perhaps because her cult became conflated with the titulus Anastasiae, an ancient church by the Circus Maximus. Her feast day is 25 December.