From Persian meaning 'treasurer'; traditionally one of the Three Magi.
Caspar is one of the great names of legend and faith, traditionally assigned to one of the Three Wise Men — the Magi — who brought gifts to the infant Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Though the Bible never actually names the Magi, Christian tradition crystallized around three names — Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar — by the 6th century, cementing Caspar in the Western imagination as the young, beardless king who brought frankincense. The name's origins are likely Persian or Chaldean, possibly derived from a word meaning "treasurer" or "keeper of the treasure," a meaning that resonates beautifully with gift-bearing.
Its most celebrated historical bearer is Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the German Romantic painter whose solitary figures gazing into misty landscapes became the visual language of the Sublime. His paintings — brooding, vast, spiritually charged — gave the name a philosophical weight it has carried ever since in European artistic consciousness. S.
Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, demonstrating the name's transatlantic versatility. Caspar (and its spelling variants Kaspar and Casper) has long been popular across Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, and is enjoying a quiet renaissance in anglophone countries as parents seek names that feel both ancient and modern. The ghost Casper — friendly and beloved — gave the name a whimsical American pop-culture dimension in the 20th century, though the name's deeper roots far outweigh any single pop reference.