Nastazja

Nastazja comes from Greek. It grew out of Anastasia, built on the word anastasis, which means resurrection. The fuller Polish form is Anastazja, and Nastazja stands beside it as the shorter, plainer variant. The meaning is rising again.

That sense of resurrection reached Polish through the church calendar. Saint Anastasia, an early martyr venerated in both the Eastern and Western traditions, kept the name in circulation, and her feast falls on 25 December. So a Nastazja shares her name-day with Christmas.

On a class register the name looks old and slightly grand. It is short. When a teacher reads it out, the Greek root sits underneath, doing its quiet work: resurrection, a return from the dead.

Nastazja has never been common in Poland, which gives it a certain edge. The word behind it, anastasis, is the same word the Gospels use for the raising of the dead. Whoever carries Nastazja carries that meaning: zmartwychwstanie, the rising again.