Czesław
Around 62,000 Polish men carry it, but it barely reaches a new generation now: 25 newborn boys last year. The name comes from two old Slavic roots, cześć and sław, for honor and glory.
Czesław Pronunciation
Czesław is pronounced CHES-wahf (/ˈt͡ʂɛswaf/).
What Czesław means
Where Czesław comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Czesław comes from two old Slavic roots. The first is cześć, honor, and the second is sław, glory, the same element that closes Bogusław and Mirosław. Put together they give the sense that Polish name pages record as honor and glory, sława i cześć. The feminine form is Czesława.
Poland carried the name into its literature and its music. Czesław Miłosz took the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Czesław Niemen bent Polish rock into strange new shapes across the 1960s and 70s. Both made the name familiar far past the borders of any parish register.
The name day falls on 20 July, for the blessed Czesław Odrowąż, a Dominican friar of the thirteenth century. On that morning a boy named Czesław might hear his name read out at the urząd or marked off in a school register. The shorter forms, Czesiek and Czesio, do the daily work.
Honor and glory: that is what the two roots still spell.
How many people are named Czesław
1 in 344 men in Poland is named Czesław. 62,010 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #162 among male names.
Czesław's popularity over time
25 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #472 among newborns. It is making a comeback after a low in 2005. Still the #162 name among living men, even as it slips to #472 among newborns.
Where Czesław is most popular
Czesław is most popular in Greater Poland, 223% above the national average (65 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Pomeranian (+147%) and Kuyavian-Pomeranian (+86%). It is least common in Warmian-Masurian and Opole, 70% and 54% below average respectively.
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Greater Poland65 boys born+223%
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Pomeranian34 boys born+147%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian19 boys born+86%
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Lower Silesian17 boys born+16%
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Masovian27 boys born−18%
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Lesser Poland14 boys born−34%
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Łódź7 boys born−41%
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Silesian11 boys born−48%
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West Pomeranian4 boys born−49%
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Opole2 boys born−54%
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Warmian-Masurian2 boys born−70%
Czesław as a middle name
Czesław is a first name for 62,010 men in Poland and a middle name for another 50,993, a 55/45 split — almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 56th, between Damian (52,574) and Bogdan (50,472).
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54
52,728Leszek
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55
52,574Damian
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5650,993Czesław
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57
50,472Bogdan
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58
50,403Zdzisław