In Ireland he’s always been Daidí na Nollaig at school and Santa at home, however a new illustrated map reveals that Mr. Claus goes by many different monikers depending on where you live.
While in Britain he’s Father Christmas, French children look forward to a visit from Père Noël. In Sweden however, Christmas gifts are brought by the Jultomten and Noel Baba does the delivery in Turkey.
In an effort to end the seasonal confusion, Czech linguist Jakub Marian came up with this handy map illustrating the local term for the man himself in various European countries.
Marian says:
“Each country (or region) has its own traditional Christmas gift-bringer. Some of them are quite nice, such as the British Father Christmas, others are outright weird, such as the Catalan “defecating log”, but all of them are equally interesting.
The following map shows the gift-bringers’ names with translations, coloured by relatedness of the concepts themselves (i.e. not by etymological relatedness of the names).”
You can read Jakub’s blog here.