“Santa” means “female saint” in Italian and Spanish. Perhaps the English “santa” came from another language but I always found the name “Santa Claus” just horrible.
It’s actually Sinterklaas (without a space) and we still call him that :) We also ended up re-importing the American Santa Claus, so these days we have two festive holidays in December.
The first mention of this version of Saint Nicholas's name has the form "St. A Claus" and appeared in the New-York Gazette of 20 Dec 1773.[1] The same issue also first reported some incident regarding tea in Boston harbour. Nice coincidence.
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