Gloria

Gloria comes straight from Latin, where gloria means glory. For centuries the word lived in church before it lived on people, sung in the Gloria in excelsis Deo at Mass. In Polish that same glory becomes chwała, the idea carried in a different mouth.

As a given name, Gloria is mostly a modern arrival. George Bernard Shaw put a Gloria at the center of his 1898 comedy You Never Can Tell, and the name climbed in English-speaking countries soon after. Italian and Spanish families took it up as well, helped along by a liturgy they already knew.

There is Gloria Swanson on the silent screen, Gloria Estefan on the radio. The sound travels easily across borders.

On a Polish class register the name reads as plainly foreign, three syllables that announce their meaning to anyone who knows the Latin. It says glory, and it has said little else.