Antonia

Antonia grew out of Antonius, the name of an old Roman clan, the gens Antonia. The Romans themselves did not agree on where the word began, and some traced it to Etruscan roots now lost. So the sense of "priceless" or "invaluable" came later, attached to the name by people who wanted it to mean something warm rather than something merely old.

The most famous early bearer was Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Antony and niece of the emperor Augustus. She raised a household of emperors and was remembered in Rome for her steadiness.

In Poland the name keeps close company. Antoni is its masculine twin. Antonina is the fuller feminine form, and from both come the everyday Tosia and Tonia, the names a child actually answers to. A second meaning, "kwitnąca", the blooming one, drifted in through an old confusion with the Greek word for flower. Read a school register in Kraków today and you will find a Tosia near the top. Priceless is the promise; Antonia is the word that holds it.