Alexey
The Russian spelling of Aleksy, from a Greek root meaning "defender". Fewer than 700 Polish men carry this form, and it's given almost never now: most people here will never meet one.
Alexey Pronunciation
What Alexey means
Where Alexey comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Alexey comes from the Greek Alexios, built on the verb alexein, to ward off or defend. The short meaning follows plainly: defender, obrońca in Polish. In Poland the name settled into the form Aleksy, and it kept that guarding sense as it moved west from Byzantine into Slavic use.
The name has a strong Russian association, worn by tsars and by Alexei, the last tsarevich. Polish readers, though, met it earlier. One of the oldest surviving texts in the Polish language is the fifteenth-century Legenda o świętym Aleksym, the verse life of Saint Alexius of Rome, a wealthy man who gave everything away to live unknown as a beggar. His feast falls on 17 July, the imieniny still marked for anyone named Aleksy.
Picture a school register today. A single Aleksy sits among the Aleksanders, close in sound yet a separate name with its own root.
The defender under Alexey never fully leaves. Whether spelled with the Russian -ey or the Polish Aleksy, the word beneath still means obrońca.
How many people are named Alexey
1 in 32993 men in Poland is named Alexey. 647 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1170 among male names.
Alexey's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.