Andrii

Andrii comes from the Greek Andreas, built on andreios, meaning manly, and behind it stands the word anēr, andros, a man. The Polish gloss keeps the idea: mężny, dzielny. In Ukraine the name belongs to Saint Andrew, called the First-Called, the apostle whom tradition places on the hills above the Dnipro where Kyiv would later rise. The link is old. That is why Andrii sits so deep in Ukrainian life.

For centuries the sense of manliness leaned less on muscle than on steadiness under pressure, the courage the Polish dzielny still points to. A modern bearer makes it plain. Andriy Shevchenko, the striker who won the Ballon d'Or in 2004, carried the name across every stadium that heard it.

Read the register of a Polish school today and Andrii turns up among Ukrainian children, spelled with the double i that marks its origin. The name day falls on the thirtieth of November, Saint Andrew's feast, the eve of the old andrzejki fortunes. So the name arrives already meaning one thing: manly, dzielny, mężny.