Nicolae

Nicolae comes from the Greek Nikolaos, a compound of nikē, meaning victory, and laos, meaning people. Put together, the name reads as victory of the people. The second part, laos, also named a gathered crowd or an assembly, so the name spoke from the start about a multitude rather than one person.

The most famous bearer was Saint Nicholas of Myra, the fourth-century bishop whose generosity fed centuries of legend and, much later, the figure children greet at Christmas. His feast falls on the sixth of December, and in Poland that day is Mikołajki, when small gifts turn up in the morning. Nicolae is the Romanian spelling of that same saint's name, worn by rulers and villagers across the Carpathians.

A child called Nicolae might meet the name on a school register or an official form at the urząd, plain and hard to misread. The meaning stays legible underneath. Victory of the people, zwycięstwo ludu, from two old Greek words that have not gone quiet.