Katia

Katia is a short form of Katarzyna, whose roots reach back to the Greek name Aikaterine. In Poland the fuller name usually shortens to Kasia instead. Katia took another road, carried through Russian, French, and Italian speech until it sounded native in each country rather than borrowed.

The meaning people attach to it, "pure," came later. The old Greek name has an origin that scholars still argue over, and only afterward did it drift toward katharos, the Greek word for clean and unmixed. That is how the sense of purity settled onto Katarzyna and, by inheritance, onto Katia.

On a Polish class register you might meet one Katarzyna who signs herself Katia. Short and a little foreign. When her imieniny comes around it still links her to Saint Catherine, and to every Kasia sitting in the same row.