Achilles
Rare enough that most Poles have never met one: just 49 men carry it, and no boys have been given it so far this century. Greek at root, from a name read as "pain of the people".
Achilles Pronunciation
Achilles is pronounced ah-KHEEL-les (/aˈxillɛs/).
What Achilles means
Where Achilles comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Achilles comes from Greek, and its name has been read as a compound of two old words: ákhos, meaning grief or pain, and laós, the people or fighting host. Put together they give the sense recorded here as "pain of the people". The hero of Homer's Iliad wears that meaning like a wound. His rage opens the poem. Greek soldiers die for it.
That grim reading did not stop the name from traveling. It reached Polish through Latin as Achilles, the same spelling a teacher might read from a class register today.
The short meaning stays close to the Greek. A child called Achilles takes a warrior's name and a warning about what one man's fury can cost an army. The origin is Greek, the sense is "pain of the people", and the form has stayed Achilles.
When Achilles celebrates name day
Achilles appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, never as a main name. The first of these dates is 23 April.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Achilles
1 in 435636 men in Poland is named Achilles. 49 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5383 among male names.
Achilles as a middle name
Achilles is a first name for 49 men in Poland and a middle name for another 52, a 49/51 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1037th, between Rościsław (53) and Atanazy (52).
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#1035 Renato53
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#1036 Rościsław53
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#1037 Achilles52
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#1038 Atanazy52
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#1039 Danilo52