Artsiom

Artsiom is the Belarusian form of a name shared across the Slavic east, the local shape of what Russians write as Artyom and Ukrainians as Artem. Behind all of them stands the older Artemios, and behind that the goddess Artemis, so the short meaning runs "belonging to Artemis." That is the thread the name has followed out of Greek and into Belarusian mouths, softened at last into Arts-.

There is a second reading, and it came later. Greek speakers heard in the name the word artemes, safe and sound, and so a boy called Artsiom could be greeted as one who was healthy and untouched, zdrowy, nietknięty. The link to Artemis is the older one; the sense of good health was attached afterward.

The name travels well. On a Belarusian team sheet Artsiom Milevski, the striker, made the spelling familiar to football crowds across the region.

Read it on a class register in Grodno and it looks entirely at home, three letters short of Artem and a world of its own. The origin is Slavic by adoption and Greek by descent, and the meaning most parents will read first is the plain one: healthy, unharmed.