Boryslav
A Ukrainian name from Slavic roots, meaning "battle glory". Fewer than a hundred men in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met one.
Boryslav Pronunciation
What Boryslav means
Where Boryslav comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Boryslav grows from two old Slavic roots. The first, bor-, comes from a verb meaning to fight or to struggle. The second, slava, means glory. Put together they give the sense the name still holds: battle glory, or in Polish waleczny i sławny.
The name belongs most strongly to Ukrainian tradition, where forms of Borislav have been given for a very long time. There is a Boryslav on the map too, a town near Lviv known for its old oil and ozokerite works. In Polish the name settles into the variant borysław, close enough that a Pole reads it without pause.
A child called Boryslav meets his name early. It appears on the school register, in the teacher's roll call, on the first official form at the urząd. Some carry a shorter, everyday version at home. The full name waits for documents and for imieniny.
Battle and glory sit inside one word, and that is what Boryslav means.
How many people are named Boryslav
1 in 266827 men in Poland is named Boryslav. 80 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3959 among male names.