There are two streets in NYC that begin with X, if you don’t count Brooklyn’s Avenue X. Both are Xenia Streets: in Corona, Queens, and Old Town, Staten Island.
Xenia (which I had thought was a flower, but that’s zinnia) is a Greek term meaning ‘strange’ or ‘foreign’; it frequently turns up in combined terms like xenophobia, fear of strangers, or philoxenia, kindness toward strangers. It is also a city in Ohio and a variety of coral.
I don’t know how it ended up on two NYC street signs…
1/4/12
9 comments
Some chick who calls herself Warrior Princess lives on that street. She’s cute but apparently not into guys.
Well, Xenia and Xenos are two different things. Xenos = stranger or foreign. Xenia means hospitality (i.e. looking after strangers). Hospitality St. Beautiful! 🙂
Also, I believe it is the name of the sister of the Last Tsar, Nicholas? Russian neighborhood, maybe????
“Xenia” is also the first name of Famke Janssen’s character in the James Bond movie “Goldeneye.”
Xenia is the name of the sister of Tsar Nicholas II….Is the sign in a Russian neighborhood????
Yes, according to the Xenia Ohio website, “The City of Xenia (pronounced Zeen-yuh) derives its name from the Greek word for hospitality”. Zeen yuh later.
Makes sense. Xenophobia is “an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange” or just the opposite of hospitality.
the actual word for hospitality is filoxenia = filo+xenia = friends+strangers.
the name xenia comes from the names of the god zeus xenias and goddess athena xenia who were protectors of the strangers. Hospitality was a great virtue in ancient Greece and they used to have big rituals to welcome foreigners.
As a street sign fan, this was a particularly cool entry, I never really thought that I never see any streets beginning with X!