Celestyna

Celestyna comes from the Latin caelestis, "heavenly," which grows out of caelum, the word for sky or heaven. The name entered Polish through the Church calendar, where it stands beside its masculine form, Celestyn, a name borne by several popes and by the thirteenth-century hermit who became Celestine V. Its Polish meaning holds close to the Latin: niebiańska, heavenly.

There is also a literary shadow. In 1499 the Spanish author Fernando de Rojas gave the name to the scheming go-between of La Celestina, and for a long time afterward a celestina meant a matchmaker in Spanish. Polish readers rarely meet that association, and here the name keeps its older, skyward sense.

On a school register, Celestyna tends to shorten to Celina, a diminutive that has long lived as a full Polish name in its own right. The two travel together, one formal and one everyday. Sign a document at the urząd and the birth record still keeps the whole of it, caelestis and all, the heavenly form intact.