Łada

Łada comes from Slavic roots, a name medieval chroniclers tied to a goddess of love and marriage. Jan Długosz, writing in the fifteenth century, listed Lada among the deities old Poles were said to invoke. He muddled much of what he recorded. Later writers read the goddess as a figure of harmony between two people who wed.

The short meaning given to the name, harmony and love, sits close to the Polish word ład, meaning order. Whether the goddess named the word or the word named the goddess is still argued by linguists. The sense of the loving bride was attached to Łada slowly, across centuries of retelling.

Today the name is rare. A child called Łada on a Polish class register stands out at once. The bogini miłości i małżeństwa survives mostly in folk songs, where the refrain "łado, łado" repeats without anyone needing to explain it.