Was Good King Wenceslas a saint?

Yes. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Wenceslaus a martyr and the patron of Bohemia, honored because his brother Boleslaw killed him in 935 partly for religious motives, and his feast is kept on 28 September.

Who wrote Good King Wenceslas?

John Mason Neale wrote the words, first published in Carols for Christmas-Tide (1853) with Thomas Helmore, who fitted them to the thirteenth-century spring carol "Tempus adest floridum" from Piae Cantiones (1582).

Is William a saint's name?

Yes, though not a biblical one. Behind the Name names William of Gellone, an eighth-century cousin of Charlemagne who became a monk, as an early saint with the name.

Christian Boy Names Starting With W: Wenceslas, Willibrord and the Missionaries Behind Them

Four of the five saints behind the Christian W names on this page left home to preach. Willibrord and Winfrid crossed from England to the Frisians and the Germans, Wilfrid preached in Sussex while exiled from Northumbria, and Wolfgang went from Swabia to the Magyars.

The fifth, Wenceslas, stayed in Bohemia as its duke and was killed by his brother in 935. The carol that calls him "Good King Wenceslas" was written nine centuries later by John Mason Neale and published in 1853.

Two of the missionaries came home from Rome with new names: Willibrord as Clement and Winfrid as Boniface. William, which Behind the Name counts among the most common English names, is not biblical either; it is the Germanic Willehelm, borne early by the eighth-century monk William of Gellone.

Quick Facts

W names in the Bible: None for men in Behind the Name's biblical index
Good King Wenceslas: Duke Wenceslaus of Bohemia, about 903 to 935
Carol words: John Mason Neale, published 1853
Renamed by popes: Willibrord as Clement (695), Winfrid as Boniface (722 or 723)
Mission fields: Frisia, Germany east of the Rhine, Sussex, and the Magyars in Pannonia
William: Germanic Willehelm; early saint William of Gellone

Are there W boy names in the Bible, and where did the W saints come from?

None of the five W saints below has a namesake in scripture, and Behind the Name's index of biblical men lists no W name. Their names entered Christian use through men born in early medieval Europe between the 630s and the 930s, and four of them are remembered for the places they went to preach.

Where each W saint was born and where he worked
Saint	Lived	Born in	Worked in	New name given in Rome
Wilfrid	634 to 709	Northumbria, son of a thegn	Ripon and York; as a missionary at Selsey in Sussex	No
Willibrord	658 to 739	Northumbria	Ireland for twelve years, then Frisia from Utrecht, with an abbey at Echternach	Clement, in 695
Winfrid	born about 672 to 680, killed 754 or 755	England, probably Wessex (Crediton in Devon, according to later authors)	Frisia, then Hesse and Thuringia east of the Rhine, then Mainz; killed at Dokkum in Frisia	Boniface, in 722 or 723
Wolfgang	about 934 to 994	Swabia, in a family of counts of Pfullingen	Trier, Einsiedeln, the Magyars in Pannonia, then Regensburg as bishop	No
Wenceslas	about 903 to 935	Bohemia, son of Duke Wratislaw	Bohemia, which he ruled as duke	No

The first three rows are one chain of teachers and helpers. Wilfrid taught Willibrord at Ripon, and Winfrid later worked beside Willibrord in Frisia.

Was Good King Wenceslas a real person?

Yes. The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies him as Wenceslaus, also called Václav, "Duke, martyr, and patron of Bohemia," born probably in 903 and killed at Alt-Bunzlau on 28 September 935.

His family was divided over religion: his father, Duke Wratislaw, was a Christian, his mother Dragomir was not, and his grandmother St. Ludmilla gave him a Christian education. After Wratislaw died, Dragomir ruled as regent and opposed Christianity until the people urged Wenceslaus to take the government himself.

As duke he placed Bohemia under German protection and brought in German priests. His brother Boleslaw murdered him "for religious and national motives, and at the instigation of Dragomir," and three years later, repenting, had the body moved to the Church of St. Vitus in Prague.

That killing is why the Church honors him as a martyr, with his feast on 28 September. The title "king" rests on one sentence in the same entry, which calls him a duke but says that Emperor Otto I conferred on him "the regal dignity and title."

The duke of 935 and the carol of 1853
Question	Wenceslaus the duke	"Good King Wenceslas" the carol
Where it is recorded	The Catholic Encyclopedia entry "St. Wenceslaus" (1912)	Words by John Mason Neale, printed in Carols for Christmas-Tide (1853)
His title	Duke of Bohemia, with a royal title credited to Otto I	King
What happens	He rules Bohemia, favors German priests and the Latin rite, and is killed by his brother	He sees a poor man gathering winter fuel and carries him meat, wine and pine logs through the snow with his page
The date	Killed on 28 September, now his feast day	The Feast of Stephen, 26 December

John Mason Neale (1818-1866) wrote the words, which first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide in 1853, a collection he made with Thomas Helmore. Neale had already told the same story in prose in his book Deeds of Faith (1849), and Helmore set the carol to "Tempus adest floridum," a thirteenth-century spring carol printed in Piae Cantiones in 1582.

The poor man and the page come from one of the legends that had gathered around the duke, which Neale, according to the hymnology site Hymns and Carols of Christmas, wove into his carol. The Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on Wenceslaus mentions no poor man, page or winter night, and its history ends with a murder in September.

The carol opens "Good King Wenceslas look'd out, On the Feast of Stephen," which places it on 26 December. The same site says Neale wanted a carol for St. Stephen's Day, and the carol's last verse draws a Christian lesson: those with wealth or rank who bless the poor will themselves be blessed.

As a boy's name, Wenceslas is the English form. Behind the Name traces it to the Czech Václav through the Latin Venceslaus, so a family wanting the saint's own name in his own language would use Václav.

How did Willibrord become Clement and Winfrid become Boniface?

Both men received their new names in Rome when a pope made them bishops. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Willibrord was consecrated Bishop of the Frisians on 21 November 695 "and given the name of Clement," and Winfrid was consecrated a regional bishop on 30 November 722 (some date it 723) "with the name Boniface."

The encyclopedia records a doubt in Winfrid's case: some writers say he took the name Boniface when he became a monk, others on his first visit to Rome. It also suggests that Boniface may be only an approximate Latin form of his English name, Wyn-frith.

The two new names had different futures. The same encyclopedia files Willibrord under his English name but Winfrid under his Roman one, Boniface.

Willibrord was born in Northumbria in 658 and studied at Ripon as a disciple of Wilfrid. At twenty he went to Ireland, spent twelve years in the abbey of Rathmelsigi, and was sent from there with eleven companions to Frisia.

He made Utrecht his cathedral city and in 698 founded an abbey at Echternach, in Luxembourg, where he died on 7 November 739. When the Frisian ruler Radbod took the whole country in 716, Willibrord had to leave; he came back in 719, after Radbod's death, and the Catholic Encyclopedia names St. Boniface as his helper in repairing the damage.

Echternach has drawn pilgrims since his burial there. When his relics were moved to the new basilica in 1906, the encyclopedia counts 15,085 dancers in the town's dancing procession.

Winfrid first sailed for Frisia in 716, expecting good ground because Willibrord and others had already preached there, but political disturbances sent him back to England. In 719 Pope Gregory II gave him authority to preach to "the heathens in Germany to the right of the Rhine."

In Hesse he felled the oak sacred to the thunder-god Thor at Geismar, near Fritzlar, and built a chapel from its wood; the Catholic Encyclopedia says the onlookers expected Thor to strike him, and many converted when nothing happened. Pope Zachary made him Archbishop of Mainz in 748 (or 747).

In 754 he resigned Mainz and went back to the Frisians, the people he had first set out to reach. At Dokkum the following year, pagans attacked a gathering of new converts and killed him with fifty-two companions (thirty-seven by another count), and his body went to Utrecht, then Mainz, and finally the abbey of Fulda.

His English helpers in Germany included his niece Walburga, whom he made abbess of Heidenheim.

Wilfrid and Wolfgang: an exile in Sussex and a bishop from Swabia

Wilfrid (634-709), the son of a Northumbrian thegn, studied at Lindisfarne and in Rome before King Oswy's son gave him the new monastery at Ripon. There he brought in the Benedictine Rule and argued the Roman side at the synod of Whitby in 664, where the Catholic Encyclopedia credits his advocacy with winning the vote.

Wilfrid met the South Saxons twice. Returning from France in 666, he was shipwrecked on the Sussex coast and nearly killed by its pagan inhabitants; about fifteen years later, exiled from Northumbria, he went back to the same people and preached as a missionary at Selsey, where he had worked five years by 686.

His name once saved him on the road. When his enemies tried to stop him travelling to Rome to appeal against the division of his diocese, the Catholic Encyclopedia says they stopped Winfrid, Bishop of Lichfield, instead, because of the likeness of the names, and Wilfrid got through; that Winfrid is a different man from the one who became Boniface.

Wolfgang (about 934-994) came from a family of Swabian counts of Pfullingen, and the Catholic Encyclopedia calls his name of early German origin. He was schooled at the monastery of Reichenau, taught at the cathedral school of Trier, became a Benedictine monk at Einsiedeln in Switzerland after 964, and was ordained priest by St. Ulrich in 968.

His mission field was the Magyars, who had settled in Pannonia after their defeat at the Lechfeld in 955; at the request of Ulrich and Emperor Otto the Great, the abbey annals record that he was "sent to Magyars." At Christmas 972 he became Bishop of Ratisbon, now Regensburg, where he taught the future Emperor St. Henry II, and after his death at Pupping in Upper Austria in 994 he was canonized in 1052.

Is William a biblical name?

No. Behind the Name derives William from the Germanic Willehelm, "will helmet," built from willo, "will, desire," and helm, "helmet, protection," and Behind the Name records no biblical bearer for it.

Its early saint is the eighth-century William of Gellone, a cousin of Charlemagne who became a monk. The name's spread in England came from a king rather than that saint: Behind the Name ties its popularity there to William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England in the eleventh century.