Ronald

Ronald comes from Germanic roots, joining a word for counsel to a word for rule. Together they give the meaning it still carries: ruler's counselor. The name traveled into English by way of Norse settlers in Scotland, where an older form, Rögnvaldr, gradually flattened into the Ronald written on registers today.

So the sense sits between two poles. Someone who governs, and someone trusted to advise. A name for the person at the ruler's shoulder rather than on the throne.

The most famous English bearer answered to it only at home. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, was called Ronald by his family, though he later admitted the name never felt quite like his own. That gap between a given name and the self is familiar to many. You can hold a name for a lifetime and still turn it over in your hand.

In Poland the name stays foreign, an import rather than a fixture of the church calendar. A boy named Ronald in a Warsaw class register stands slightly apart on the page. What the name offers him is old and plain in its parts: counsel, and rule.