Andrej

Andrej reaches back to the Greek Andreas, built from anēr, andros, the plain word for man. From that root grew the meaning Poland still attaches to the name: manly, brave. The apostle Andrew carried Andreas across Christian Europe, and Slavic speakers reshaped it in their own mouths. The settled Polish form became Andrzej. Andrej stands close beside it as a variant, holding the harder consonant of the East.

Short version: the name means brave.

Greek already named the virtue, andreía, courage as the quality of a grown man, so the sense of bravery attached to Andreas from the start. A boy given this name inherits that old link. Open a class register in a Polish school and you may find both spellings, Andrzej as the home form and Andrej as its cross-border cousin. The name day falls on 30 November, świętego Andrzeja, the eve tied to andrzejki fortune-telling. Whatever the spelling on the urząd form, the root underneath stays the same andr, man.