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/).
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.
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.
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.
Where Adrian is most popular
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.
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Podlaskie169 boys born+47%
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Subcarpathian287 boys born+36%
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Lesser Poland501 boys born+26%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian210 boys born+10%
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Warmian-Masurian134 boys born+7%
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Lower Silesian289 boys born+5%
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Lublin180 boys born0%
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Pomeranian255 boys born−1%
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West Pomeranian144 boys born−2%
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Łódź207 boys born−7%
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Lubusz79 boys born−9%
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Silesian359 boys born−10%
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Świętokrzyskie86 boys born−11%
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Opole71 boys born−12%
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Masovian508 boys born−18%
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Greater Poland299 boys born−21%
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).
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69
34,860Bogusław
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70
33,718Filip
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7133,341Adrian
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72
32,812Krystian
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73
31,271Maksymilian
When Adrian celebrates name day
Adrian appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar. The main date is 9 January.