Antoni

Antoni descends from the Latin Antonius, the name of an old Roman family, the gens Antonia. The Romans carried it long before anyone fixed a meaning to it, and its earliest sense is lost. Later readers linked it to the Greek word anthos, meaning flower, and that is how the gloss "kwiat" came to sit beside the name. A second reading gave it the sense of priceless, nieoceniony, something that cannot be reckoned in coin.

Whatever the origin, the name found a home in Poland through Saint Anthony of Padua, whose feast falls on 13 June and who is still asked to help find what has gone missing. His imieniny fills church calendars each summer. From Antoni grew a whole household of forms: the feminine Antonina and its older cousin Antanina, and the softer Antosia, Tosia, and Tola.

Read a school register in any Polish town and Tosia will likely sit a few desks from an Antoni. The name shortens easily and wears well. Its Latin root stays fixed while the meanings, flower and priceless, ride alongside it.