Anton

Anton grows from the Latin Antonius, the name of an old Roman clan called the gens Antonia. Its most famous bearer was Marcus Antonius, the general who tied his fortunes to Cleopatra. The Roman name had no fixed meaning of its own. The sense of "priceless" and "invaluable" came later, once writers linked it to a Greek word for a blossom. So that meaning is a story laid on top. Rome did not hand it down.

The name travelled and shifted. Germans and Scandinavians kept it as Anton, and Russians did the same, softening it in speech to Antosha. Poland uses the fuller Antoni and the everyday Antek, with Antonina for a girl.

A boy called Antek learns to answer to it from the first day of the class register. His name-day falls on 13 June, for Saint Anthony of Padua, whom Poles still ask to help find what is lost. The word is short, and behind it stand the Roman Antonius and the borrowed sense of something priceless.