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Adrian

Greek at root, the name points back to Hadria, the town by the Adriatic, and it has stayed strictly a boys' name. It still sits inside Poland's top 100, but fewer parents pick it every year: far more boys carried it a decade ago than do now.

Adrian Pronunciation

Adrian is pronounced AHDR-yahn (/ˈadrjan/).

Related names
Adrián Adrianna
Alive in 2025
149,216
Newborns 2025
310
National rank
#97
Next name day
9 January
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What Adrian means

Where Adrian comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.

The name Adrian goes back to Hadria, a town whose name also gave the Adriatic sea its own. The short meaning, "from Hadria," marks a place before it ever marked a person. Reaching further back, the root runs through the Greek Mediterranean world, where a name could work as a plain address, a way of saying where someone came from.

In Poland the name settled firmly around Saint Adrian of Nicomedia, an early martyr venerated in the local church calendar. His feast falls on the eighth of September, and Polish Adrians keep their imieniny on that day. So the place-name grew a patron, and the patron grew a date.

The name bends easily. Its cross-gender form is Adriana, and the variant Andrian holds the same Adriatic root while shifting a single letter. Picture a school register in Kraków where an Adrian and an Adriana sit two rows apart, sharing one origin between them. Under all of it stays the plain sense: someone from Hadria, near the Adriatic.

When Adrian celebrates name day

Adrian appears 6 times in the Polish name day calendar, 3 of them as a main name, the first on 9 January.

Next name day
9 January
Saturday in 2027
Next one in 76 days
Name days

The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.

Also celebrates

Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.

How many people are named Adrian

1 in 143 men in Poland is named Adrian. 149,216 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #97 among male names.

People with the name Adrian 2019 → 2025
149,216 +3,390 since 2019
2020 146,354 +528
2021 147,101 +747
2022 147,761 +660
2023 148,515 +754
2024 148,895 +380
2025 149,216 +321

Adrian's popularity over time

310 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #145 among newborns. It has been falling steadily since 2000. Still the #97 name among living men, even as it slips to #145 among newborns.

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310 newborns with the name Adrian in 2025
national rank #145 that year

Where parents choose Adrian

Adrian is most popular in Podlaskie, 47% above the national average (169 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Subcarpathian (+36%) and Lesser Poland (+26%). It is least common in Greater Poland and Masovian, 21% and 18% below average respectively.

Chosen most
  • Podlaskie
    +47%
    1 in 389 babies
  • Subcarpathian
    +36%
    1 in 420 babies
  • Lesser Poland
    +26%
    1 in 453 babies
Chosen least
  • Greater Poland
    −21%
    1 in 720 babies
  • Masovian
    −18%
    1 in 697 babies
  • Opole
    −12%
    1 in 649 babies

Adrian as a middle name

Adrian is a first name for 149,216 men in Poland and a middle name for another 33,341, an 82/18 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 71st, between Filip (33,718) and Krystian (32,812).

As a first name
149,216
As a middle name
33,341
first name 82% middle name 18%
Middle-name ranking men

Look up another name

Search the register, or step through the ranking one place at a time.

Next in ranking → Mikołaj #50