Andrejs
From the Greek for "manly, brave". Only 157 men in Poland carry it, and it's barely given today, so most Poles have never met an Andrejs.
Andrejs Pronunciation
Andrejs is pronounced AHND-reys (/ˈandrɛjs/).
What Andrejs means
Where Andrejs comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Andrejs reaches back to the Greek Andreas, built from andreios, meaning manly. Behind that sits anēr, andros, the Greek word for a man, which gives the short sense recorded here: manly, brave. The apostle Andrew carried the name into Christian Europe, and from there it spread into dozens of local forms.
In Polish, the name you meet most often is Andrzej, the everyday variant, while Jędrek is the warm diminutive that a teacher might read from a class register. Andrejs sits a step to the side, closer to the Baltic north, yet it belongs to the same family.
The meaning is plain. Brave, manly, a man's man in the oldest Greek reading. The feast of Saint Andrew falls on the thirtieth of November, and the night before carries the old fortune-telling Poles call Andrzejki, with hot wax poured through a key. A boy called Andrejs shares that date with every Andrzej and Jędrek in the country.
How many people are named Andrejs
1 in 135963 men in Poland is named Andrejs. 157 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2572 among male names.