Hannah

Hannah begins in Hebrew, in the word channah, which names grace and favour. The Bible gives it to the mother of Samuel, a woman who prayed for a child and received one, and her song in the first book of Samuel is among the oldest voices to carry the name. From that same Hebrew root the idea branches into Anna, the variant Polish speakers reach for most easily.

In Poland the name takes on diminutives. A girl called Hannah becomes Hania to her friends and Hanka to her grandmother. Read a school register in Kraków and you may find all three spellings sitting a few lines apart.

The English colouring of Hannah is fairly recent. English-speaking families took the older biblical form and kept its symmetry, the same letters running forwards and backwards. The letters mirror themselves. That is part of why it travels well across borders. What stays constant underneath is the sense the Hebrew gave it: grace, favour, a good thing received.