Matvey

Matvey comes from the Hebrew Mattityahu, which binds together the words for a gift and for God into one meaning: gift of God. Greek speakers reshaped it as Matthaios, the name of the tax collector who followed Jesus and lent his name to the first Gospel. Russian took that Greek form and wore it down to Matvey, the spelling stamped on birth records across Russia and carried west to Polish ears through neighbours and books.

The sense stayed near the surface. Someone with a little church Greek or Hebrew could hear a child described as something granted from above. In Polish the phrase reads dar boga.

On a Polish class register, Matvey would stand beside the local Mateusz, the same Hebrew root in a Russian coat rather than a Polish one. The two boys answer to Matthew's name without knowing it. What they share is Mattityahu, the gift of God.