Barak
A Hebrew name meaning "lightning". Only about 90 men in Poland carry it, and none were given it last year, so most Poles will never meet one.
Barak Pronunciation
Barak is pronounced BAH-rahk (/ˈbarak/).
What Barak means
Where Barak comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Barak comes from Hebrew, where the word barak means lightning. That single image sits behind the name. It belongs to the Jewish naming tradition, and it has kept its plain sense across centuries of use.
The oldest famous Barak stands in the Book of Judges. Barak son of Abinoam gathered ten thousand men at Mount Tabor and rode down against Sisera, with the prophet Deborah beside him (Judges 4). The victory poem that follows, the Song of Deborah, counts among the oldest passages in the Hebrew Bible. A man called lightning won a battle that scripture remembers as sudden.
The name carries no Polish diminutive, no softened home form. On a Polish class register it would stand as Barak, four letters, unchanged. That bareness is part of it. A child who bears the name meets the meaning with nothing in front of it.
Barak means lightning, błyskawica, and nothing gentler.
How many people are named Barak
1 in 237180 men in Poland is named Barak. 90 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3693 among male names.