Ilia

Ilia reached Polish through Greek, which shaped it from the Hebrew name behind the prophet Elijah. The sense it carries is a short confession of faith: my god is Yahweh. The name is old.

In Russian it found a long home, spelled Ilya. That spelling belongs to Ilya Repin, the painter who gave the nineteenth century its portraits of barge haulers and village priests, and to Ilya Muromets, the bogatyr of the old bylina songs who lay motionless for thirty years before he rose to defend the land. Both men, one real and one legendary, wore a Greek name built on a Hebrew sentence.

Picture a teacher reading a class register in a Polish school, pausing a beat at Ilia before the next name. A form that looks eastern, an origin running back through Greek scribes to the Hebrew Eliyahu, and a meaning that never shifted: my god is Yahweh.