Andriy

The name comes from Greek. Andreas grew out of andros, the word for a man, and the meaning that settled on it was plain enough: manly, brave. Ukrainian speakers made it their own as Andriy, holding onto the hard sound of the original rather than softening it into the Polish Andrzej.

Its saint is Andrew the Apostle, the first disciple called by name and, by long tradition, the patron of Ukraine. His feast falls on 30 November. In Poland that same date carries Andrzejki, the old name-day eve of wax and fortune-telling, so a boy named Andriy shares his celebration with every Andrzej on the school register.

Closer to our own time, the footballer Andriy Shevchenko took the name across Europe and brought it home to Kyiv again. A child given it today, later filling in a form at the urząd, inherits a Greek root and a single old claim about the person who carries it: manly, brave.