Janisław
Fewer than 140 men in Poland carry Janisław, and no boys have been given it in years: most Poles will never meet one. It's an old Slavic name meaning "glorifying John", pairing the name Jan with the root for glory.
Janisław Pronunciation
Janisław is pronounced yah-NYEES-wahf (/jaˈɲiswaf/).
What Janisław means
Where Janisław comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The name Janisław joins two Slavic pieces. "Jani-" comes from Jan, the Polish form of John. "-sław" is the old element sława, glory or fame. Read together, the name means one who glorifies Jan, sławiący Jana.
That -sław ending places Janisław in a wide Polish family: Stanisław, Bolesław, Mirosław. Each shares the same claim to fame. Janisław stays far rarer.
The sense of glorifying John was layered onto an older Slavic habit of building names from words for glory. Jan itself travelled from Hebrew through Greek and Latin, and it means God has been gracious. Janisław binds that borrowed saint's name to a native Slavic suffix.
On a school register, a boy named Janisław would sit apart from the rows of Jan and Janusz. The form is old, and the meaning stays legible: glory to Jan.
How many people are named Janisław
1 in 154683 men in Poland is named Janisław. 138 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2804 among male names.
Janisław as a middle name
Janisław is a first name for 138 men in Poland and a middle name for another 46, a 75/25 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1132nd, between Honorat (46) and Jarogniew (46).
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1130
46German
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1131
46Honorat
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113246Janisław
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1133
46Jarogniew
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1134
46Khalid