Dennis

Dennis begins in Greek, in the name Dionysios, which means follower of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of wine. The short meaning has held onto that source: one who belongs to the god of the vine, of festival and the grape harvest.

From the Greek the name passed into Latin as Dionysius, then thinned across medieval Europe into Denis and the doubled English form Dennis. Much of its spread owes to Saint Denis, the third-century bishop and martyr who became a patron of France. The English-speaking world took up the spelling with two n's and kept it for centuries.

Dennis has no Polish diminutive of its own and no cross-gender pair to lean on. It arrives fairly plain. On a school register in Poland the name reads as clearly foreign, an English guest among the Krzysztofs and Tomasze. Yet the root underneath stays Greek, and the meaning stays fixed: a follower of Dionysus.