Artemii

Artemii comes from Greek. It descends from Artemios, a name built on the goddess Artemis, and the sense handed down to its bearers reads "dedicated to Artemis." The tie to a huntress goddess is old, though the name reached most of its bearers through the Church rather than through myth.

Saint Artemius of Antioch anchors that Christian line. He was a fourth-century military commander who was later martyred under the emperor Julian, and his feast falls on 20 October. Byzantine Greek carried the name eastward, where Russian and Ukrainian speakers made Artemii their own.

For a Polish reader the spelling looks foreign. And it is. Written into a class register in Wrocław, Artemii sits beside the Antonis and Michałs as a sign of an Eastern home. The double i at the end holds onto the Greek Artemios, and behind it stand the goddess and the plain meaning, dedicated to Artemis.