Abraham

Abraham comes from the Hebrew Avraham. In the book of Genesis, the man first bears the name Abram, meaning something close to exalted father, and then God renames him Abraham, glossed there as father of a multitude. That story fixed the meaning still attached to the name: father of many.

The name belongs, above all, to Jewish tradition. Abraham is the first of the patriarchs, the one who leaves his country and becomes an ancestor claimed by three faiths. Because of that standing, the name stayed common among Jewish families in Poland for centuries, and it kept its full form without softening into diminutives.

To carry it is to carry a founder's name. It has meant lineage, a promise about descendants, a beginning.

The meaning has not drifted. In a Polish class register the entry reads plainly, Abraham, with no shortened form beside it. Ojciec wielu narodów, father of many, is the sense given in Genesis when Abram became Abraham.