Anatol
Greek at root, meaning "sunrise". A men's name that stays rare: most Poles have never met one, and the handful of boys given it each year keeps drifting down.
Anatol Pronunciation
Anatol is pronounced ah-NAH-tol (/aˈnatɔl/).
What Anatol means
Where Anatol comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Anatol comes from Greek, from anatolē, the word for sunrise. The same root named Anatolia, the wide land to the east where morning first shows over the water. So the name looks toward the horizon where light returns.
In Polish records the name stays uncommon, and it keeps the variant Anatolie alongside the standard form. Its French relative, Anatole, belonged to Anatole France, the writer who took the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. The sense of "sunrise" was never a wish stitched onto the name; it sits in the Greek itself, in the east that the word marks.
Poland gives Anatol his own imieniny, most often on 3 July, tied to Saint Anatol, a third-century bishop of Laodicea who had taught philosophy in Alexandria before his ordination. Read out from a class register, the name still turns a few heads. Rare, old, and pointed at the east. Whatever else it gathers, Anatol keeps meaning wschód słońca, sunrise.
When Anatol celebrates name day
Anatol appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, 3 of them as a main name, the first on 20 March.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
How many people are named Anatol
1 in 8451 men in Poland is named Anatol. 2,526 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #635 among male names.
Anatol's popularity over time
9 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #726 among newborns. It is making a comeback after a low in 2003. Still the #635 name among living men, even as it slips to #726 among newborns.
Where Anatol is most popular
Anatol is most popular in Masovian, 196% above the national average (33 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Łódź (+151%) and Pomeranian (+29%). It is least common in Lesser Poland and Subcarpathian, 72% and 47% below average respectively.
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Masovian33 boys born+196%
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Łódź10 boys born+151%
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Pomeranian6 boys born+29%
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Greater Poland8 boys born+18%
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Silesian5 boys born−30%
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Lublin2 boys born−38%
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Subcarpathian2 boys born−47%
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Lesser Poland2 boys born−72%
Anatol as a middle name
Anatol is a first name for 2,526 men in Poland and a middle name for another 735, a 77/23 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 266th, between Jean (746) and Enrique (735).
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#264 Hugo753
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#265 Jean746
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#266 Anatol735
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#267 Enrique735
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#268 Helmut727