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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/).

Alive in 2025
62,010
Newborns 2025
25
National rank
#162

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.

People with the name Czesław 2019 → 2025
62,010 -20,128 since 2019
2020 80,345 -1,793
2021 75,966 -4,379
2022 71,726 -4,240
2023 68,233 -3,493
2024 65,077 -3,156
2025 62,010 -3,067

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.

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25 newborns with the name Czesław in 2025
national rank #472 that year

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.

More common than average Less common than average

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).

As a first name
62,010
As a middle name
50,993
first name 55% middle name 45%
Middle-name ranking men

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Next in ranking → Olga #163