Bartłomiej

The name Bartłomiej reaches back to Hebrew, to Bar-Talmai, which means son of Talmai. Talmai itself points to the furrow a plough cuts, so the Polish gloss reads syn oracza, son of the ploughman. The apostle Bartholomew carried this name into the Christian calendar, and Polish speakers reshaped it to their own mouths.

From that long form come the everyday versions. Bartosz stands as a variant, a name in its own right on a school register. Bartek is the diminutive a teacher calls across the classroom.

His name-day falls on 24 August, the feast of Saint Bartholomew, an old marker in the Polish year. Farmers once read that day's weather for hints about the coming autumn. The origin is Hebrew. A boy named Bartłomiej meets his patron there, and he meets the older picture too, the ploughman turning earth behind the sense of son of Talmai.