Is Christina's name day on May 9 or July 24?

Both dates are in use, for different things. National Christina Day falls on May 9, while the official name-day calendars of Sweden and Finland place Kristina and Kristiina on July 24.

Who created National Christina Day?

The day belongs to the internet's holiday listings rather than to any organisation, and no proclamation, resolution or founding announcement for it has been found. No creator is on record.

What does the name Christina mean?

It is the native form of the Latin Christiana, the feminine of Christianus. Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore classes it as a saint's name.

National Christina Day

Next celebratedSunday, May 9, 2027

A queen signed this name off a throne at Uppsala in 1654, and both copies of the act survive, one in Stockholm and one in the Vatican. May 9 marks the name; the day is the one part of the story nobody wrote down.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMay 9

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Circulation is the whole documentary record.

National Christina Day circulates through holiday listings and social posts each May 9. No founder, founding year or establishing record has been identified.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

Settled by committee: the July date Sweden gave Christina

In Sweden a standing committee decides which first names get which day of the year. It put Kristina, the Swedish form of Christina, on the 24th of July. National Christina Day arrived by a different route.

The committee draws its members from the Swedish Academy, the Royal Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Letters and the state Institute for Language and Folklore. Their shared list has run since 2001. It replaced an older calendar that gave each day a single name.

The American record for the name is exact. The Social Security Administration counts 471,354 girls given the name over the last hundred years. Sweden's record of the name starts a great deal earlier.

ORIGINS

Christina Day history

INTRODUCTION

The oldest surviving trace of the name in Sweden is not written in ink. It is scratched in runes, spelled kr(e)stin, and the country's Institute for Language and Folklore dates it to the 1100s. The form behind it is the Latin Christiana, the feminine of Christianus.

An early Swedish bearer was the eldest daughter of King Inge the Elder, who died around 1100. The name's most famous holder walked away from a throne.

CHAPTER 01

A queen who signed it away

Kristina Augusta was born in Stockholm in December 1626, and her father made her crown princess the following year in case he produced no legitimate son. That father was Gustav II Adolf, killed at the battle of Lützen while she was still a small child. A board of five chancellors led by Axel Oxenstierna held her powers until she was declared of age at eighteen.

She refused outright to marry and named her cousin Karl X Gustav as her successor. At Uppsala in 1654 she signed the act that ended her reign. She gave no reason at the time, saying only that it would become clear why.

Her conversion to Catholicism is widely accepted as the answer. The act itself survives in the Swedish National Archives, digitised and open to anyone, with a duplicate copy in the Vatican archives. She died in Rome in 1689 and lies in St Peter's Basilica.

CHAPTER 02

A holiday of a different kind

The May observance belongs to another tradition entirely. A search of Congress.gov across legislation, the Congressional Record and committee reports for the exact phrase returns nothing.

No proclamation, resolution or founding announcement has been identified. What exists instead is circulation: listings, calendars and posts that repeat the date to each other. The name carries nine centuries of paperwork, and the day carries a listing.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Christina Day

MACHINERY

633 names by 2027, and someone decides every one of them.

Sweden's list is actively curated rather than left to custom, and it is still being revised in the present tense. Six names join it in 2027, Cassandra, Eira, Flora, Mio, Vilgot and Zackarias, taking the total to 633.

THRESHOLD

A name has to earn its slot

Finland revisits its name-day lists at roughly five-year intervals, counting how many living people actually carry each name. A name needs about 500 bearers to be considered for the Finnish-language calendar, and about 50 for the Swedish-language one.

REGISTRY

American national days run on applications

Slate reported in 2025 on the registry it calls the de facto administrator of these observances, whose founder told it he receives about 30,000 applications a year, screened by a four-person committee voting anonymously. The same reporting found that some entries are brand-sponsored days built for a paying client.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Christina Day Around the World

Sweden

Kristina shares 24 July with Kerstin, and twelve further forms may celebrate alongside them, from Stina and Tina to Kickan and Titti.

Sweden, 1 January

The almanac leaves New Year's Day deliberately nameless, as a shared name day for the roughly 200,000 forms of first name that have no day of their own.

Finland

The University of Helsinki's Almanac Office sets the national name days. Its Finnish-language almanac has run since 1705 and its Swedish-language one since 1608, and it keeps separate calendars for cats, dogs and horses.

Finland, Orthodox calendar

Kristiina appears three times over in the office's Orthodox list: 24 July, 18 May and 13 March.

Italy

At Bolsena in Lazio, the basilica of Santa Cristina stands over catacombs where tradition places the burial of a martyr Christina, between the late 3rd and early 4th century. Pope Gregory VII consecrated the church in 1077.

GOOD TO KNOW

Four Christinas worth knowing

Christina Rossetti

John Ruskin told her brother in 1861 that Goblin Market was too "full of quaintnesses and offences" to print; Macmillan printed it the next year to wide critical praise.

Anna Christina Olson

Andrew Wyeth's neighbour, who inspired Christina's World and appears in four of his pictures; he called it an attempt "to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless."

Christina Koch

The NASA astronaut who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, 328 consecutive days, and who flew around the Moon aboard Artemis II in April 2026.

Princess Christina of Sweden

Born in 1943, she is the reason Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore gives for the name becoming a fashion choice there in the 1940s and 1950s.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Christina Day by the Numbers

16th: US girls' name rank, 1970s
125th: US girls' name rank, 2000s
Unranked: US top 200, 2010s onward
627: Names on Sweden's list today

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Christina Day

Mark the July date as well

Sweden and Finland both seat Christina's Nordic forms on 24 July. Marking both dates gives the Christinas in your life two turns instead of one.

LOOK

Look up your own name day

The University of Helsinki's Almanac Office runs a public name day search covering its Finnish, Finland-Swedish and Orthodox lists. Type in a name and it returns the dates.

TRACK

Track the name through the census tables

The Social Security Administration publishes its decade by decade name tables in full. You can look up a Christina you know in the year she was born.

SEE

See Christina's World in person

The painting hangs at the Museum of Modern Art, catalogued as object 16.1949. Wyeth worked in tempera on panel, and the title was his wife's idea.

OPEN

Open a queen's abdication act online

The Swedish National Archives have digitised the 1654 act that ended Kristina's reign. Their catalogue lists it as SE/RA/25.2/25/A, and it is free to open.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Christina Day?

1 / 8

Christina comes from the Latin Christiana, the feminine form of which name?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

17sources

13primary records

7independently dated

Primary records

Institutet för språk och folkminnen2023-10

Kristina (Kristin, Christina m.fl. former)

Sweden's national name entry for Kristina, with its 24 July name day and earliest attestation.