Egor

Egor took shape in Slavic speech as the everyday Russian form of Georgiy. Behind it stands the older Greek Georgios, built from words for earth and for work, which gave the name its plain reading: the farmer, the man who turns the soil. The meaning stayed close to the land.

To Polish ears the name lands as clearly Russian, and it comes trailing that whole eastern literature. One well documented bearer is Yegor Gaidar, the economist who served as Russia's acting prime minister in 1992. For most people called Egor, though, the story ran nearer the meaning itself: villagers and smallholders who bore a name that once described the labour of their days.

On a Polish class register, Egor stands out among the Kacpers and the Szymons, a small sign of a family with roots to the east. The name has no imieniny of its own here and no local diminutive; it arrives in one piece. What it keeps is its oldest sense, the farmer standing at his field.